Two Step
by Disrupted Original
Summary: Nick-centric continuation of L4D2. At least twice a day he would trace a finger over the faded highways that stretched over the map in his hands. Every step he took could very well be in the wrong direction, but he had to take it. He had to find them. Language, violence, adult situations. Original characters. No pairings, just friendship. Complete. Thank you for reading!
1. The Savior

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

Christopher Nielson stood on the shore next to his wife, Amanda, and stared out at the broken skyline. What had once been a quiet North Carolina city was now a ruin. Dust and shadows were all that remained of their world, their home.

This was what Christopher knew:

It had been two months since the first outbreak, if the transmissions on the radio were to be believed. During the first week, Christopher acted much like the rest of the nation had; he had done nothing, expecting it to be another scare tactic by the media. Then everything had gone straight to Hell, and Christopher had taken his wife and fled the city on his private yacht.

Three weeks in and the military had abandoned the mainland. Christopher heard this over the radio, and stayed on the water. There they had lived, for over a month, until they had run out of supplies. When they dared a trip back to the city there were no people to be found. The yacht had run aground on the shore and toppled, leaving them stranded on the beach.

There was nothing more to be done. They would not be able to get the yacht back into the water. The only thing they could do now was move on.

So Christopher stood, gazing at the city, wondering where to go first. He had once been the head of a veterinary drug company. Now he figured it didn't matter. His graying hair was cropped close to his head and his blue eyes were shrouded as he glanced over to his wife.

Amanda looked back up at him. She was tall and slim, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her arms were crossed over her chest; fear had entered her eyes. Both of them were wearing the heavy jackets with his company logo on it, jeans, and tennis shoes. Amanda shifted her feet in the sand.

"Chris," she said. "I don't want to go into the city."

"We have to," Christopher said, looking back out towards it.

Amanda had always been a serious person, levelheaded and kindhearted. She'd been blessed with a good life. Now there was nothing in the world that could have prepared her for the strife ahead.

"Do you think it's true?" she asked suddenly. "They were talking about... infected people. Like... zombies."

"I hope not." Christopher glanced back at the toppled yacht. "Besides, honey... zombies don't exist."

They stood for a few more minutes. The shoreline was silent but for the growl of the ocean. Ahead of them the city sat like a damaged watercolor painting, unmoving.

Above them, the sun was high in the sky.

Christopher and Amanda started off then.

It had been less than a mile when they saw their first dead body. A woman, curled into herself, on the roadside into the city. Her face was covered in blood.

Amanda had been less startled than he thought she would be, but his stomach turned at the sight and he had to look away.

"Just keep walking," he said.

It was not the last body they would see. The dead were everywhere, piles of them in some places, scattered like broken toys in others. Amanda skirted around them, horror etched upon her face.

The silence consumed them. Everywhere there were empty houses, abandoned cars. Christopher thought they might be the only ones in the entire city. He took Amanda's hand and they went into the streets. A sickly-sweet smell filled the air, mixed with the smoke. Streaks of red over every object they could see.

They had been walking only two hours. Amanda was sobbing, covering her mouth with her free hand while Christopher tugged her along, face set and stubborn.

"We gotta keep moving. Don't look."

There was nothing left.

Two months was all that had passed, and it might as well have been a year. This was not the city he had grown up in, bereft now of its noise and warmth, a wholly different place. Christopher swallowed and tried to quell the vomit rising in his throat.

When they came upon the corpse of a man whose head had been shattered with the force of some powerful blast, painting his insides all over the window of a toy store, Christopher had to stop. There hadn't been much food in his stomach but it ended up on the ground, and he stood over his knees and dry heaved for what felt like hours. Amanda stood next to him in silence. He could hear her crying, but she hadn't said a word since they'd left the yacht.

Eventually, the time came for them to move on, and they did. The terrifying images of the corpses were only replaced by ones much worse than the last.

Christopher didn't know how long they had been wandering, but the light of the sun was beginning to wane when Amanda pointed out a sign. It was spray-painted on the side of a white van-- the image of a cross inside a house, and an arrow pointing down the street.

"It might mean safety," Christopher said, clutching Amanda's hand tighter. His own voice sounded unknown to him in the stuffy silence.

He led her down the street, where more signs pointed out their path. They came to an apartment building that had been fortified with a heavy steel door, and bars over the windows. Christopher looked inside and saw only shadows. There was a final sign next to the door beckoning them to enter.

When they walked inside, Amanda found a bar that had been used to lock the door shut.

"Wh-why would anyone need this?" she asked. Her first words roughened her voice. "Why would someone need to barricade themselves inside?"

Christopher shook his head, unsure of the answer. He found a battery-powered lamp on a nearby table and turned it on. The warm orange light filled the room, a strange juxtaposition to the emptiness of the streets outside.

Almost immediately he saw the scrawled writing on the walls, and Amanda stood next to him, reading them aloud.

_"The infected are not your friends. Kill on sight. Military evacuating up north. Can hear the helicopters. Avoid the sewers._" Amanda was shivering. "What does this all mean, Chris?"

"Maybe..." Christopher swallowed and rubbed his eyes. "Maybe you're right. The infection... it really did make all the people crazy."

"Is that... is that why they're all dead out there?" Amanda's voice was barely above a whisper. "Were they infected?"

Christopher just shook his head again. The mural of writing continued down the wall. Most of them suggesting to head north up the coast. Some of them from other people trying to get in contact with loved ones. Amanda followed him as he walked along the wall, flicking his eyes over the multicolored writing.

"Look," she pointed down at one near the floor. "This one is from a few days ago."

_"Ellis, Coach, Nick,_" Christopher read aloud. _"Waited two days. Where are you? HEAD NORTH. Rochelle."_

There was more. Someone else had written below her note.

_"GUYS. IF YOU CAN READ THIS, KEEP GOING NORTH. WE WILL MEET UP WITH EACH OTHER. ELLIS."_

Below that;

_"followed the coast north! waited here for a day. no sign of anyone coach."_

Amanda bent down and looked closer. "It's dated for today. There are people still alive out here!"

Christopher frowned. "Sounds like they got separated somehow."

"Maybe we can find them," Amanda said. "Maybe they can help us."

"I hope so," Christopher muttered, glancing around the room. "Do you want to keep moving?"

"Yes," his wife replied. "Yes. I do. I don't want to stay here."

"It's getting dark. I don't know if I want to walk around in the dark."

Amanda screwed up her face a little in anguish. "Please. Let's just go."

Christopher sighed. "All right. Come on."

"Wait. Look at this," Amanda said next to him, halting and pointing down at a table. There was a pistol here, gleaming in the light of the lamp. She looked over it uneasily. "Do you think we should take it?"

"I've never fired a gun," Christopher told her, but he took it anyway, stuffing it in the pocket of his jeans.

They turned off the lamp and continued through the backdoor. The sun hadn't quite set yet, filling the streets with a strange gray light. Christopher led Amanda through a park, and a playground. He tried not to think about the still forms that lay in odd positions in the grass.

Then, out in the dark, there was a sound.

"Listen," Amanda hissed, stopping him.

It was a soft popping sound, as if echoing from miles away.

"Gunshots," Christopher exhaled. "Those are gunshots."

"It could be those people. The ones from that barricaded room."

He was hesitant. "If they have guns, I don't know if I want to meet them."

Amanda glared at him. "_You_ have a gun."

"But I'm not using it! Come on."

They kept going. Somehow the street lights were still operating, and they walked from post to post, holding hands tightly and staying where it was lit.

Christopher had led his wife around a corner when a soft growl came to his ears. His heart leapt up into his throat and he skidded to a halt.

"What is that?" Amanda asked, panicking. "What is that?"

Out of the mixture of shadows and moonlight a form came stumbling. A person.

"Hey!" Amanda yelled.

Christopher hushed her and pushed her behind him, yanking the pistol out of his pocket. The person looked over at him, head lolling awkwardly, a groan coming from its lips.

It shifted on its feet, and charged at him.

Christopher pulled the trigger on the pistol but it stuck, and after a second he realized the safety was still on. He found the switch and lifted the gun again, firing twice.

The person stumbled, muttered something unintelligible, and toppled over.

Amanda was hyperventilating behind him. "Oh my God, Chris."

"It's okay," he said, although he wouldn't stop shaking and the pistol threatened to slip from the sweat on his hands. "It's okay. It was infected. It was infected." He wiped his face and put the gun back in his pocket. "He was going to attack us. I had to."

"I know," Amanda said, but she was crying again.

Christopher took her hand again and they were off. It didn't take them long to find the red door of another safe house.

"Let's stay in this one," Amanda told him. "I don't want to go on in the dark anymore."

"Okay."

Inside, there was a lamp similar to the last. Christopher lit it and sat down in a nearby rocking chair while Amanda tried to collect herself next to him. He had never killed anyone before, unless he counted the drugs he sold to veterinarians for euthanasia. No, that didn't count. These were people. _People._ With lives and family and pets of their own.

"I'm scared," Amanda cried softly.

"I know," Christopher said, trying to sound stronger, for himself more than her.

They clung to each other in the rocking chair, listening to the quiet in the city outside.

* * *

Christopher woke up, not quite knowing how he'd fallen asleep. Amanda was curled in his arms, and they were stuffed in a chair too small for the two of them. Carefully, he settled her down in the chair by herself while he stood up with a stretch. The pistol was still in his pocket and they were still in the city.

Somehow, he was hungry, and he found a box of fruit bars in a kitchen. He ate one while staring at the graffiti on the walls. More warnings of infected, of 'zombies.' It made him shiver.

One of the last ones was dated for two weeks ago. Next to it was one from yesterday.

_"NICK I HOPE YOU FIND THIS BECAUSE IF YOU ARE DEAD I WILL BE MAD. ROCHELLE COACH AND I ARE GOING NORTH, WE CAN NOT STAY IN THE CITY. KEEP GOING MAN. DON'T LET THE ZOMBIES KILL YOU. ELLIS._"

Christopher sighed as he read the note, looking back at his sleeping wife. If _north_ was where these other survivors were heading, then he would be going that way, too.

He found another note, hastily written.

_'nicholas. we are leaving this for you. i know you need it. GO NORTH! coach.'_

Beneath the note was a cardboard box. Christopher reached over and pulled it towards him.

"That's not ours," Amanda said suddenly from behind him.

Christopher started and looked at her. Apparently she'd risen without him realizing it. "What?"

"The other survivors left that for their friend."

"Well, we need it more," Christopher snapped, while she let out a small huff of irritation. He pulled the box open. A sheet of paper was folded and set on the top. When he opened the paper, a second piece, thick and laminated, fell out. It was a map of the East Coast, with an 'X' just above the state line of Maine.

Amanda bent down and picked up the first sheet.

_"'Nick',_" she said aloud, _"'follow this map. This is where the safe zone is supposed to be. You are more of a fighter than any of us and if we can get there so can you. Ellis found some ammunition for your sniper rifle if you still have it. I know how much you_-'" Amanda paused. "It's been scratched out. Oh, here we go-- _'We miss you. I'm sorry about what happened on the bridge. Just know that we haven't forgotten about you. We WILL SEE EACH OTHER IN MAINE. I PROMISE. Rochelle, Ellis, Coach.'"_

Christopher listened in silence, digging through the box. Inside he'd found two heavy boxes of ammunition, along with a set of clean clothes. Beneath that he found a first aid kit, and a few other menial things. A bar of soap, a pack of cigarettes.

Amanda bent down and took the map from his hand, folding it neatly back into the paper.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm putting it back. It's not ours."

"We should take the first aid kit at least," Christopher told her.

Amanda shook her head. "No, Chris."

"Well, I am gonna take it, 'cause it'd be stupid not to, especially if this guy isn't ever going to come for it."

His wife gave him a heated glare. "I can't believe you."

"I'm just thinking realistically, honey."

"You're as bad as the zombies."

"Don't say that. Come on, I'm putting the rest of it back."

Amanda just shook her head and went to the back door of the safe house, glaring out the window. "You're such an asshole sometimes."

Christopher frowned. Honestly, he couldn't see the problem.

They started out through the city late in the morning. It was gutted from fire, rotting like an animal corpse, stripped buildings like ribcages and silent high-rises like teeth. The air smelled like copper and burning hair, and a haze had settled down around them, yellow and thick and suffocating. They had to get out of the city as soon as possible, Christopher thought, or the smell alone would probably kill them.

Amanda kept herself out of arm's reach of her husband, turning her nose up every time he tried to reason with her. She was still sore about the supplies he'd taken, but although he tried his best he couldn't figure out why _leaving_ the stuff would have been better. His job was to take care of _her_, not someone else, some anonymous survivor that was probably dead by now.

From some strange miracle, they took all of the right alleys and side-streets and avoided the infected, though they could still hear them. Snarls and yelps and gibberish echoed along the buildings, drifted through the air. Every once in a while they would hear a discharging gun, hear the infected take notice and wander in the direction of the noise.

Christopher was glad that his wife wasn't speaking to him at the moment. The silence that came between them only seemed to help as they picked their way to the outskirts of the city.

In his pocket, the pistol was cold and heavy. He kept his hand wrapped around the handle but never withdrew it. After a few hours of walking, stewing in her own anger, Amanda seemed to give up her grudge. She hunkered close, smiled apologetically, and slipped her hand into his free one.

Christopher nodded, kissed her on the forehead.

"We're gonna be okay," he whispered.

"I know."

They continued on, turning into a street lined with shops and open-air diners. Immediately they froze.

Bunched amongst the tables and doors and parked cars were the infected, some swaying in the sunlight, others ripping amongst each other. There had to have been dozens of them, clumped together tightly like lost, wild animals.

Amanda's breaths came in short little gasps. Christopher tugged her back around the corner.

"Oh God," she was whispering over and over again. "Oh God. Oh no."

A few yelps echoed across the street.

"Did they see us?" Christopher hissed, yanking the pistol from his pocket. "I think they didn't see us."

Amanda was clinging to his arm, panting. "No, no, no..."

Christopher edged around the corner again, peering down the street. One was stumbling around just a few meters away, mumbling something that he couldn't discern.

"Let's go back the way we came," he whispered to his wife.

When they began to backtrack, another came crashing out of an apartment doorway right in front of them.

Amanda couldn't help it. She shrieked.

The answering call was filled with anger and hunger, coming from all directions at once, even the windows above them.

Christopher grabbed her hand, catching her terror-filled eyes with his own. "We need to run."

Feet pounding on the concrete underneath them, they dashed back to the market street. The infected were there, already snarling, becoming louder as they caught sight of them. To his left, Christopher saw a real estate office that had been boarded up with planks. A large metal red door stood out against the wood grain.

It was a door not unlike the safe house they'd first found. He yanked his wife after him and went for it. The infected were on their heels, howling and yapping like animals of an ancient time. Amanda screamed and screamed, but her feet kept moving out of instinct.

Christopher didn't look back at the swarm behind them. He kept his eyes on the red door, his grip hard and crushing on his wife's hand. The empty space between them and the building became smaller, but to Christopher, it felt like he was bogged down in tar. Every shuddering breath he took he knew would be his last.

But death never came. They reached the door, bodies slamming into it from their own momentum, both of them grasping for the handle.

It stuck and wouldn't turn.

"Oh _fuck_," Christopher yelled, hearing the zombies getting closer, closer, _closer_. He yanked hard at the door. Amanda wailed, deep and primitive, clawing at the barred window. "Open, open, for God's sakes, _open!"_

A snarl came just behind his ears and his panic turned into screeching, babbling prayers to God, to Jesus, whoever and whatever could help him, if only they would _help him_.

And then, salvation. The door swung open and they both fell face first at someone's feet. Christopher was still praying, unsure whether they'd landed in front of a zombie or someone else, but he got his answer when he heard the earsplitting _bang_ of a rifle being fired above him.

It fired again and again. Christopher's ears were ringing, but he was scrambling to get away from the noise, from the animals coming after him. He crawled behind the receptionist's desk in front of them, dragging his shrieking wife with him. Together they huddled underneath it, clinging to one another. Amanda was sobbing, hands gripping painfully to his upper arms.

Through the static and his wife's wails in his ears he heard the door being slammed firmly shut and locked. The sounds of the infected seemed to dwindle. He heard approaching footsteps and couldn't look up for the trembling in his limbs. He rubbed Amanda's back, hushing her through numb lips, although both motions were useless.

Within his line of vision he saw the black barrel of a rifle swing into view.

"You guys ever see a zombie before?" came a voice, older and male, smooth and calm.

Christopher was blinking tears out of his eyes, his brain finally piecing together that this person had saved them, and that they were, more or less, safe. The gun's barrel glinted in the partial light of the office. The owner tapped him with it.

The barrel was warm.

"Is she okay?"

Amanda was beginning to calm down, sobs turning into huge sucking gasps for air. She was shaking her head over and over, fingers twisting in her hair. "No, no, oh God," she was whispering.

Christopher slowly looked up as he wrapped his arms around his wife. Their savior was a tall man, probably in his mid-thirties, wearing jeans and a hooded jacket. Dark hair swept back out of his slightly stubbled face. Christopher saw a series of scars across his forehead, ending near a milky left eye. The other was a dark, dark green. In one hand the man held a black rifle; it was sleek, scoped. He had an impassive look on his face as he stared at them.

"What the hell are you doing out here? The military abandoned the mainland weeks ago," the stranger said, leaning back against the wall behind him.

Amanda was recovering faster now, and was able to formulate more than a few words at once. She twisted her head in Christopher's arms and looked up at the man. Very quietly, she said, "We were on our yacht. It ran aground."

The stranger looked incredulous. "A _yacht_?"

Christopher nodded, looking up as he began rubbing his wife's shoulders, holding her close to his chest. "We went out to the ocean when we heard about the illness... ended up staying out there."

"For eight weeks?"

"Yes."

The man ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. "That's pretty insane." He slung the rifle over his shoulder and shrugged. "Welcome to Zombieville, I guess," he muttered.

Amanda began feeling better. She detached herself from her husband, rubbing her face hard. "I think I'll be okay. Hard to catch my breath."

"We're fine," Christopher told her, shaking his head. "We're fine."

The stranger watched this exchange with little interest before stepping forward and offering Amanda a hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. "You two," he started, leaving the husband to pick himself up, "need to find some guns."

"We have a pistol," Christopher spoke defensively, before he realized he'd lost it sometime in the mad scramble to get away from the infected outside. "_Had_... a pistol," he muttered.

"There's a shotgun in the back room. You could take that."

"I can't shoot a shotgun," Christopher shook his head again.

The man raised an eyebrow. "You might want to learn, buddy." He shrugged again. "Well, good luck," he said, before disappearing into the back office.

"Ph- _wait!_" Christopher called, following after him, Amanda close behind. "Where are you going?"

The stranger didn't pause. "Well, I thought I'd head downtown. Have lunch with some old colleagues. Stop at the mall, pick up somethin' for the family."

Amanda stared after him, jaw dropping open. "What are you talking about?"

"It was a _joke_," the man stated, lifting up a duffel bag from the floor and slinging it over his shoulder with the rifle. He offered them little more than a quirk of a smile. "The shotgun's over there. Later." Then he opened the back door and was gone.

The husband and wife looked at each other wildly before scrambling after him. Christopher paused at the door, looking back at the shotgun. He hesitated for only a second before jogging back and grabbing it up, then following his wife out to the back.

Chistopher stumbled out and into the bright sunlight. It was quiet. Ahead, he saw the stranger slipping into an alleyway. Grabbing Amanda's hand and holding the shotgun in his other, they ran to catch up.

"Wait, wait," he hissed, trying not to attract the infected. Christopher ducked down the alley and saw him already on the other side, pulling his rifle from his shoulder. "Hey, wait!"

The man looked back at him as they approached, irritation present on his face. "Get lost, you two."

"Wh- you can't just... just leave us here!"

He saw the man flick the safety off of his rifle. "Sure I can," he said, squeezing off of a couple of loud shots into the street ahead as he gazed down the scope with his good eye. "Now stop following me."

"Maybe there's some kind of deal we can work out," Amanda said. "My husband here owns a drug company. We can pay you--"

The stranger didn't look up. He continued to sweep the rifle, seeking out targets through the scope. "You know your money is useless out here, right?"

Christopher came closer. "Can't we just follow you? We won't get in your way."

There was a long moment where the man seemed like he hadn't heard him. Then he sighed, resigned, lowering the barrel of the rifle. "Fuck it. Just stay behind me, alright? I'm not gonna apologize if you run into the line of fire."

"Okay, okay," Christopher said, letting out a sigh of relief. "Whatever you need. Just lead the way."

The man rolled his shoulders and set off again, grumbling under his breath.

Christopher saw a few fresh-dead zombies as they turned into the street. Amanda walked next to him, hand in his, and looked at him with hopeful eyes.

"Stay over here," the man ordered, waving his right hand. "Where I can see you."

Christopher and Amanda hurried to comply. "So are you blind on that side or something?" They kept their voices hushed, trying to not attract undue attention to themselves.

"Does it matter?"

"Well, it's pretty scarred up, isn't it?"

"I guess," the stranger replied, his voice devoid of interest.

"What happened?" Amanda asked, tone innocent.

The man gave them an irritated glare. "I didn't bring you two along for conversation. Shut up."

Christopher looked at his wife, who closed her mouth and screwed up her face a little. She was a woman who was used to getting her way, and it showed in the way she looked at the survivor.

God, but she was resilient. Just ten minutes ago she was shrieking and unable to talk from fear. Maybe she felt better now, being around someone who knew how to use a gun.

That was it, then. Christopher would just have to learn how to use his new shotgun. It was his job to protect her, after all. He was the husband.

Hopefully, they wouldn't have to stick with their new friend the survivor for too long.

Christopher hadn't even asked the man his name.

* * *

_(A/N: He's exactly who you think he is. Stay tuned.)_


	2. The Survivor

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

* * *

The survivor led them through the city. He took back alleys and short-cuts, avoiding infected as much as possible, much like they had. This man was better at it. He had no qualms with moving back and taking different paths, with climbing over chainlink fences or buses or dumpsters.

Amanda and Christopher followed in silence. Surprisingly, Amanda complained little, not even when she tore open her jacket on the sharp edge of a fence, or when she stepped right onto a pile of rotting intestines.

Their companion didn't say much, either. The quiet was uncomfortable.

The sun was directly above their heads when he led them into a safe house, a cramped space that was probably an apartment lobby. Christopher stepped inside, crinkling his nose at the smell of squalor living conditions while the survivor pulled down the steel lock bar of the door.

"Just hang here a bit," the man said to them, setting down his duffel and rifle on a table.

Amanda nodded, hovering close to her husband.

They watched the survivor pick through a pile of boxes stacked up against a wall, then dig around underneath a desk.

"What... what are you looking for?" Amanda asked.

"Ammunition. Food. Whatever." The man spoke from behind the desk, not pausing in his search.

"Do you need help?"

"No."

Christopher fiddled with the shotgun. He hadn't fired it, yet, and come to think of it, he wasn't even sure it was loaded or not. It was a pump-action, like the ones crazy people used in movies. He pulled the pump back slowly, hearing it make that _chkk_ sound. A round came out of the chamber and fell to the ground.

The survivor was moving around again, not even paying attention to them.

Amanda watched Christopher pump the shotgun again, picking up the rounds off of the floor. She shook them; the buckshot still inside rattled. "I think they're unused," she said.

"Put them in your pocket," Christopher told her, raising the shotgun. The barrel came up and he thoughtlessly pointed it at the survivor.

The man jumped forward on what seemed pure reflex, grabbing the barrel and shoving it upwards with a snarl. "Don't _ever_ point that shit at me," he warned.

"Sorry," Christopher stuttered. "But I don't think it's loaded. The shell came out."

The husband had never seen such an angry look on a person's face before. Scowling, the survivor held out his hand. Christopher handed him the shotgun.

Hands deft, as if he'd been born into it, the man pumped it. Another round came out. "Of course it's loaded, you idiot," he seethed. "Look at this. The safety isn't even on. Jesus, why did I even suggest you take a gun?"

Christopher felt his face flush. "I told you I've never used one."

"Well, pardon me for assuming you knew where the _bullets come out_," the survivor growled.

Amanda was shifting from foot to foot, nervous, twisting her hair with one finger. "Maybe you can teach him how," she suggested, voice still quiet.

"God, help me," the man sighed, casting his eyes to the ceiling. "The only other two people out here and they can't do shit." He stepped forward. "Come here."

Christopher inched closer.

"Here. This is the safety catch, alright?" the man was explaining, tone impatient as he pointed out a small switch on the side of the stock. "You see that red dot? When you can _see the dot,_ the gun _is gonna fire._"

"Okay," Christopher mumbled. He felt like he was twelve again.

"This is where you reload," he turned the shotgun over and pointed out the magazine, which Christopher hadn't even noticed. "This is an eight-round magazine. Pay attention to how many you got in there." He looked up, holding out his other hand. "Ammo," he said.

Amanda fished the shells out of her pocket and put them in his hand.

"What-... is this _it?_" The man pinched his eyes shut and sighed. "You didn't take the extras?"

Christopher shrugged, feeling stupider than he'd ever had in his entire life.

"Christ. Alright." The survivor loaded the other two shells, then handed the gun over. "There. It's hot. Point and shoot, sailor. Make sure you pump it each time you fire." He paused. "But not in here. And not at me."

"Okay... okay... got it..." Christopher murmured.

Amanda stood next to him silently, shaking her head.

The survivor turned away from them.

"What a _dick_," Christopher whispered under his breath to his wife.

If the man had heard him, he'd ignored it. The survivor was looking at the wall now, good eye flicking through the notes scrawled upon it.

Amanda, curious to read what had been written, came slowly and carefully up to look, making sure she was where she could be seen.

One note, written sloppily in all-capital letters caught her eye first:

_'IF YOU READ THIS NICK YOU ARE GOING THE RIGHT WAY! KEEP ON TRUCKIN. ELLIS'_

It was dated two days ago.

In front of her, the survivor let out a little sigh, then turned away.

Amanda looked at the wall and then the man. She re-read the note, and then turned to him.

"That's you," she said, pointing at the wall. "You're Nick."

Christopher looked up from his shotgun and over to the pair.

The survivor glanced between the two of them. Amanda thought she saw a little flicker of surprise on his face, but it was soon masked by a glare of distrust.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's me," he said.

Amanda felt a grin come onto her face before she swung towards her husband. "I _told_ you he was still alive!"

"Of course I'm alive. I'm not an idiot," Nick snapped, defensive, bending down to dig around in his bag. "Those goddamn assholes couldn't wait two days for me to catch up." He pulled something out of the duffel and straightened back up. It was a granola bar, wrapped in gaudy foil.

"How did you get separated?" Christopher asked, moving closer, assuring the shotgun was pointing at the ceiling.

Nick paused in unwrapping the granola bar. "Is that really any of your concern, sailor?"

"It's Christopher," Amanda began, her voice stronger now than it had ever been. "His name's Christopher. And I'm Amanda." She frowned. "Didn't you want to know what our names are?"

"Nah, I don't really care," Nick said, before taking a bite.

Christopher rolled his eyes. "The one person who can protect someone and he's a complete asshole," he said aloud, mirroring Nick's words from earlier.

"Survival," the man intoned between chewing, "isn't a friendly sort of game."

"It's not a game, either," Christopher pointed out.

Nick shrugged. "It's all in the way you see things. Right now? It's all about who breathes the longest. If you have a problem with me, then I'd be happy to point you back to the city."

Amanda jumped up and stopped the tirade Christopher was about to launch into. "All right. Stop it." She came close to her husband, dragged him around the corner so she could talk to him with some semblance of privacy. "Look," she whispered. "He's protecting us right now. Let's not piss him off."

"_Me_?" Christopher hissed. "Amanda, do you really think he's worried about taking care of us?"

"He led us this far, didn't he? We're just gonna have to trust him."

"How are we supposed to trust a guy who didn't have the good sense to _tell us his name_?"

Amanda frowned. "Doesn't it seem like he's been through a lot? I know how _you_ get when you're overstressed."

"Honey, I'm overstressed _right now_."

"Can we just..." Amanda sighed, and came closer. "Just keep going? ...And... try not to piss him off, okay?"

Christopher grumbled. "Fine. Fine."

When they came back around the corner, Nick was fiddling with one of the magazines for his rifle, loading rounds into it. He glanced up once as they came into sight. A tiny smile quirked beneath his stubble.

"Sticking around, are we?" he asked, keeping his eye on the magazine.

Amanda nodded. "Yes. We'll come with you, Nick."

He exhaled, looking back up and stuffing the magazine back into the duffel. "Fantastic," he muttered dryly, slinging the bag over his shoulder. "Ready to go?"

"We only just got here," Amanda said.

"Yeah, and I'm two days behind. Gotta keep moving."

Christopher glanced at his wife, then stepped forward without a word.

Nick grinned for a split second. "Atta boy. Just don't shoot me."

He flung open the safe room door and let them out into the sunlight.

* * *

They hadn't been walking for more than fifteen minutes when, without warning, Nick ground to a halt in a narrow alleyway. Christopher stopped, still carefully pointing the shotgun upwards; his wife bumped into him with a soft sound of shock.

"Why are we-"

"_Hush._" Nick glanced back at them, holding up a hand. "You hear that?"

They listened. A breeze was tinkling a windchime somewhere nearby, and a bird was crowing. Christopher shook his head, opening his mouth to tell Nick that there was nothing going on, and then a strange, alien cry sounded in the roofs of the houses above them. It sounded like... _coughing._

"What is that?" Amanda whispered, moving closer to her husband.

Nick pulled his rifle off his shoulder. "Sounds like a Smoker," he whispered, looking up.

Christopher held his shotgun tightly, face twisting in confusion. "What's a Smoker?" he asked. The words were barely past his lips when something grabbed him by the arm, yanking him with a great deal of force away from the other two. He yelped in surprise, dropping the shotgun as he tried to get it off of him. Wrapped around his arm and shoulder was a thick, off-color _thing_, constricting like a snake.

"Oh God," he shrieked, panicking. "What is this?"

Amanda was lunging after him, and he saw her terrified eyes as he began to move _upwards,_ away from the street, suspended in the air.

Nick fired the rifle twice, and Christopher heard a sound like an air canister being depressurized, before he tumbled back to the concrete below him. Scrambling to his feet, he pushed the rope off of his arm. It was slick and wet, slightly sticky.

Amanda grasped his arm, her grip tight. "Are you okay?"

Christopher nodded. "Yeah, I think so." He'd scraped his hands in the fall back to earth; they weren't bleeding much, but it still stung like hell.

"_That,_" Nick said, leaning the rifle on his shoulder, "is a Smoker. Grab you up with their... I dunno, tongues I guess."

"A tongue? A _tongue?_" Christopher whirled and looked back at the thing he'd pushed off of him. "It looks like a bungee cord!"

"Are there more of them?" Amanda asked suddenly. "In the city?"

"Probably." Nick shrugged as they gaped at him in shock. "Probably Smokers and Hunters and Spitters and everything else out here. Who knows."

"Hunters? Spitters?"

Nick sighed. "Newbies," he grunted, rolling his shoulder as he began walking. "There's more than just regular zombies, you know. Lots more. I'm surprised you haven't seen any before _now_."

Amanda walked after him, Christopher scooping up the shotgun as he followed suit.

"What other kinds are there?" she asked, fear entering her voice. "Besides ones that have snake tongues? I mean, that's..." she tried to laugh, but it was forced, anxious. "That's crazy."

"Well, there's ones that like to skulk in the shadows, then jump on you and rip your guts out," Nick said, turning towards a highway intersection, "there's ones that spit acid on you. One kind jumps on your back and rides you around. The one that rushes you at about seventy miles an hour. Then there's always the lovely one that pukes all over you."

"You're kidding me," Christopher groaned.

"I wish I were," Nick said, voice serious.

"At least there aren't giant ones," Amanda said. "You know, like... like elephants, or something."

Nick glared at her over his shoulder with his good eye.

She slowed a little. "Oh, God. There _are_ giant ones, aren't there?"

"Yes."

Christopher raked a hand through his hair. "Are they mutated or something? Is that why they're like that?"

"How the fuck should I know? I'm not a biologist. I just kill them."

They continued down the road, which was blessedly empty. It took them under a bridge where signs told them they were leaving the city limits. Out here, it was silent. Trees sprang up on either side of the highway, with scattered cars all over the tarmac.

"Are there going to be a lot of infected out here?" Amanda asked as she squinted up at the afternoon sun.

"Do I look like a psychic? Christ, you ask a lot of stupid questions," Nick growled. When Amanda screwed up her face and looked away from him, he sighed. "Look, I don't know, all right? Jesus."

Christopher frowned behind the man's back. He supposed that was as close as they were ever going to get to an apology from their companion. At least it was something. At least the man was _talking_.

On flat, open ground, Nick kept a pretty set pace. By the time the sun was beginning to sink down over the tree tops, both husband and wife were exhausted and lagging behind.

"If _he's_ going this fast," Christopher panted, "how fast were his _friends_ traveling?"

Amanda just gave him a tired smile. "You think he has friends?"

They had come upon a small trailer, parked off to the side of the road. It looked to have been here a while; the wheels were stripped off, the body set up on cinder blocks.

Christopher and Amanda caught up with Nick just as he was yanking the flimsy aluminum door open.

"What are you doing?" the husband asked, voice weary.

Nick had gone partway in. "It's getting dark," he said. "Don't want to sleep in a truck bed, now do you?"

Amanda sighed in relief. "Great, we're taking a break. Finally."

Inside, the trailer was cramped yet amazingly clean. There was a king-sized bed in the back. Amanda settled down upon it while Christopher joined Nick in raiding the cupboards.

"I can't believe I'm hungry," the husband said as he pulled a half-empty box of crackers from one of them. "I swear, every time I close my eyes I see dead bodies."

"You'll get used to it," Nick said, voice empty, as he sifted through the little refrigerator underneath the sink. Inside, he found a half-dozen bottles of clean water.

They sat around a tiny booth upon a tiny table and ate in the dying sunlight coming in through the window. It wasn't much: the crackers Christopher had found, a roll of stale bread and a can of chicken noodle soup, which the husband and wife split. Nick ate little, Amanda thought, for a man his size. When he was done he sat back on his side of the booth and gazed out the window at the darkening woods outside.

"I'm exhausted," Christopher spoke after finishing. "I think I'll turn in."

"Mm," Nick didn't move. "I'll get you up for your watch."

"My watch?"

Now the survivor looked at him. "Yeah. You think I'm gonna go all night without sleep? Someone has to keep an eye on us. There's no barricade here."

"Oh." Christopher felt disappointment in his gut and wondered how much sleep he would be able to get. "Okay, then. You coming, 'Manda?"

The wife slipped out of the booth, eager to rest. "Coming." She paused and glanced at Nick, who had returned his eye to the woods outside. "Goodnight," she said.

"Yeah," he muttered.

She shrugged and followed her husband to the bed. It was comfortable and warm, and she was asleep within minutes, curled up in Christopher's arms.

* * *

Amanda started awake at the sound of someone sobbing.

Slowly, she raised herself up, pushing the blankets off of her body. It was close.

"Nick?"

"Quiet," he rasped.

Amanda moved forward. It was pitch black inside the trailer, and she put her hands in front of herself as she inched away from the bed.

Nick was still in the booth, where he'd been when she'd gone to sleep. She could see his silhouette against the window, where a tiny, pale brush of moonlight seeped in.

The sobbing came again, loud and keening.

"Who is that?" she asked in a whisper.

"Someone you don't want to meet," Nick replied, not moving.

Amanda felt her way to the booth and slipped down onto the seat. She strained to listen. It sounded like a little girl out there.

"We should go help her. Why can't we help her?"

"There's nothing we can do for it."

Amanda felt herself frown at the term '_it'_. She turned her eyes to the window, but there was nothing to be seen out there. "Where is she?"

"Close."

"What's wrong with her?"

A soft breath. "It's a zombie."

Amanda peered closer out the window. "That doesn't sound like a zombie, Nick. It sounds like a girl."

"I know."

The wailing continued. It _was_ close- it sounded like it was just outside the trailer.

"What do we do?" Amanda asked, trying to see Nick's features in the darkness.

"We wait. Hope it passes us by." His voice was quiet. Strained.

It took Amanda a few seconds to process why: he was scared. For some reason, fear began to well up within her, as well. Nick didn't seem to be terribly frightened of zombies, no matter how mutated they were. Except for this one. What kind of beast could it possibly be?

Amanda swallowed what felt like a thick ball of cotton in the back of her throat. "What kind of zombie?"

"A Witch."

Shivers racked her body for a second. Images of a twisted form, tall and sinewy, sobbing as it attacked, leapt to her mind. Amanda shook her head and tried not to think about what it looked like.

Across from her, Nick took in a sharp breath.

"There it is. _Don't move._"

With jerky, leaden movements, Amanda turned her head looked out the windows. Highlighted by the moon was a small figure, staggering in the silver light, hunched into its hands. It had a female shape, and heaved in wailing, undulating sobs. She could see the stringy black hair that cascaded down its shoulders and arms.

The air seemed to solidify around them as Amanda watched the Witch stumble about, pause for a minute, then move forward a few feet, dazed.

Amanda leaned forward, and as she twitched her arm towards the table to balance herself, her hand hit a bottle of water. It rolled off of the table and fell to the wood floor with a _thump._

Outside, the Witch let out a loud, startled gasp.

Amanda had enough time to see the infected's red eyes flicker in the darkness before Nick was yanking her out of sight, to the floor in the tiny space beneath the table.

"Shh," he breathed into her ear. She could feel his rapid breaths against her back; he was pressed up against her, both of them stuffed into the hiding place together.

The Witch was making strange, worried noises outside.

Amanda felt her fingertips brush the cold rifle to her right. Nick was motionless.

"Oh, God," she began to whimper, but he clamped a strong hand over her mouth.

"No," he breathed. "No noise."

Tangled beneath the table, they huddled, neither moving for what felt like hours. Eventually the Witch began to sob again, and, ever so slowly, her noise began to draw away from the trailer.

When the silence returned to them, Nick removed his hand from her mouth.

Amanda crawled out from underneath the table, feeling the last dregs of the quaking terror leaving her body. "Was it really going to kill us?" she asked breathlessly, rubbing her arms.

Nick straightened himself up beside her. When he answered, it was slow and firm. "Absolutely."

"It looked... it looked so small," she whimpered.

"I know." Nick let out a soft sound, either of relief or exhaustion, and muttered, "Get your husband up. It's his turn to keep watch."

"What about me? I can-"

"Stay up with him, if you like. Just get him up."

Amanda moved to the bedside, searching with her hands until she found Christopher's shoulder. She shook it gently.

"Honey," she whispered. "Wake up."

Christopher jolted awake. "Already?" he grumbled.

"I know. I know."

She pulled her husband out of the bed and brought him to the booth. Nick brushed past them with a, 'don't shoot me in my sleep, please,' and retreated to the back.

Amanda sat with Christopher in the booth. She told him in hushed tones about the mutated infected that had passed by outside, before curling up in his arms with silent sobs.

By the time the sun rose, she was sleeping again, but her dreams were filled with flickering red eyes and wailing howls that increased in intensity until they swallowed her up into darkness.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my faithful companion-in-arms, and Kit, my beta-reader. As always, thank you for reading. Next installment: The Protector. )_


	3. The Protector

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

_

* * *

_

"Hey. Hey, Nick. Get up."

He pulled himself out of a foggy sleep and blinked open his eyes. Christopher was hovering above him, lips pursed.

"You okay?" the older man asked, tone cautious.

"I'm fine," Nick grumbled, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He pressed his palms into his eyes, feeling now that an icy sweat had collected on his skin. What the fuck had he been dreaming about?

Christopher continued to stand there. "You were, uh... I thought you were hurt," he said, his voice as flat and unintelligent as ever. For a guy who supposedly ran a drug company, he sure didn't know a lot. "You were making noises."

Nick didn't supply an answer. The memory of the dream had slipped away just as soon as he'd woken. It hadn't been a good one, if the sweat was any indication. Then again, when _did_ he have good dreams? Whatever. PTSD or not, he had to keep moving. If he made good time today, he'd be just that much closer to catching up with the others. Man, did he have a shit storm of complaints to throw down upon their heads when he finally found them.

For starters, leaving him behind on a sinking fucking cruise ship.

Christopher had walked away, shaking his head. Thank God. Nick was so tired of answering questions- questions that people in an apocalypse shouldn't even have to ask. Not knowing what a Smoker was, that was one thing. But not knowing how to handle a gun? What kind of shit had he gotten himself into?

Massaging an ache in his neck, Nick got up out of the bed. His rifle leaned against the wall nearby. He slung it over his shoulder, its familiar weight nothing but a comfort to him. The Witch from last night had put him on edge, testy. God, had it been close. The last time he'd gotten that close to one of those... well, it had been stupid of him, really, but necessary.

The memory of the table bridge tried to rise back up in his mind, but he pushed it back. He didn't have time to ruminate on _that_. There was a lot of ground to cover.

Amanda, the wife, was sitting in the booth, sipping on her bottle of water. She gave him the strangest of looks, sometimes. Either she wanted to jump his bones, or punch him in the face, if his knowledge of female expressions was correct. It usually was.

His stomach growled in hunger and he quelled it with half a bottle of water and a granola bar. There wasn't much food on him to begin with. At first he hadn't been too keen on sharing his stuff with these two, but fuck, if they started complaining about being hungry above all the other shit that poured from their mouths, he would go crazy. Crazier. What the fuck ever.

So he found another two and handed them over.

"Thanks," Christopher said, sounding stunned.

The pair scarfed them down as Nick shoved the rest of his water into the duffel bag. He paused to rub the sleep from his eye- the other didn't do much, except throb from time to time.

Christopher picked up his shotgun as they readied to move out. He was extremely careful with it, after pointing it at him yesterday. In fact, the husband was so cautious with it that he hadn't even fired it yet. What a waste.

Amanda pulled her jacket close around her before reaching up to fix her hair back into a ponytail. She reminded him of Rochelle- and himself- when they'd first met. Self-conscious. That would change soon, Nick was certain. It had been that way at first, until realizing that nobody cared, and nobody would ever care again, if his jacket was wrinkled or his hair was falling into his face. Nick had slowly stopped paying attention to his appearance, and the final nail in the coffin had been when his face had been torn half off.

Again, the memory tried to come back, and again, he shoved it away.

He moved forward and pushed open the flimsy door, stepping out into the woods. It wasn't too cold out, thank God, but a fog had come and settled down around them. That made him nervous, since the cornerstone of his survival was being able to see the zombies before they saw him.

Amanda and Christopher came out behind him.

The husband had already started up.

"It looks like it might rain."

"I didn't hear any last night," Amanda spoke.

Nick started walking, ignoring them. Slipping his way between stalled cars, he cast glances into their windows, keeping an eye out for anything useful.

The husband and wife just kept yammering. Jesus, they were like birds in a cage. Nick turned his head and glared back at them. In an instant, they were falling silent.

"Sorry," Amanda muttered.

He kept walking. The quiet would be temporary, he knew, but it was enough for him to listen for anything out in the fog. It was only a matter of time before he would hear the howl of a Hunter or the muddled shouts of a Charger.

Inside an old Prius he found a few more bottles of water and a box of instant oatmeal, the kind with dried fruit mixed in. He stuffed them into the duffel. Oatmeal was good. It had a lot of calories, especially the sugary kinds.

As he withdrew from the Prius, Christopher spoke up.

"Why don't we try to drive up the coast?"

Nick looked at him. The answer was obvious to him, but then again he had to keep reminding himself that he was traveling with two idiots. "You see any working gas stations around here? Cars are more trouble than they're worth, sailor." He adjusted the strap of his rifle. "They're noisy, they're cramped, and they're hard to keep maintained."

Amanda was nodding. "See, that makes sense, doesn't it, Chris?"

Nick was already turning away by the time they launched into another discussion.

* * *

Mid morning and zombies found them. There weren't many, just over a dozen. It was hardly a threat, but the husband and the wife had, of course, panicked.

As Nick was picking the zombies off with the rifle, Christopher came up on his left side and began firing with the shotgun. Well, he fired once, but the recoil hit him in the gut and he fell on his ass with a gasp while Nick chewed his tongue and tried not to scream obscenities.

"Ow, ow, ow," the husband was whining, and the wife had come up to see if he was all right.

Nick finished the last of the zombies, spending a bullet for each. He had to be efficient. The ammunition would not last forever.

"You're okay," Amanda was speaking again.

Nick looked down at the husband. "You're not supposed to fire it like a pistol."

Christopher was more embarrassed than hurt. "I know that now."

"From the hip or shoulder," Nick continued, setting down the rifle and picking up the shotgun. He placed it against his own shoulder to demonstrate. "Like this. See?"

"Yeah, I get it," the husband growled, yanking the firearm from him.

"Guess I should have told you that back in the city."

Christopher was grumbling, but Nick just rolled his eyes as he picked the rifle back up.

Struck with a sudden thought, he looked at the wife.

"Why don't you give _her_ the gun?"

Christopher shook his head. "No. She doesn't need to use one of these."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because it's _my_ job to protect her."

"Doing a pretty good job so far."

Christopher's face contorted into some kind of angry, ugly grimace, and he moved away.

Nick rolled his eyes to the heavens again, as if they could come down and deliver him from this situation. "She's gonna have to learn sometime."

"No, she isn't going to. I'm going to take her to that safe zone, and we'll never have to worry about guns again." There was conviction in the husband's voice. "Come on, Amanda."

They began to walk off, hand in hand. Nick chewed on his tongue again and followed.

A snarl came from the woods to their left and they froze up, whipping their heads around to stare into the fog. The noise was familiar; Nick had heard it many times before. That didn't make it any less intimidating.

"That would be a Hunter," he told the pair, lifting the rifle again.

It was making huffing growls out in the mists, seeking them out.

Nick gazed down the scope, hoping to find it before it jumped on one of them. Amanda was making those irritating whinging sounds again. He barked at her to be quiet.

Movement flickered amongst the fog, solidified into the form of the zombie. It rocked back on its heels and pounced, a howl following behind it like a shadow.

Nick pulled the trigger and made the shot of a lifetime, blowing the Hunter's skull off mid-leap. Its momentum carried it back to the earth, where it tumbled and lay still at their feet.

"Holy shit," Christopher breathed. Was there appreciation in his voice? "Holy shit."

Nick grinned to himself. "How d'you like that." He rested the rifle on his collarbone and looked over to the other two. "Now that's how you kill a fucking zombie."

Amanda gulped. "I'll say."

He walked away from the body feeling quite pleased with himself. Oh, this was going on his top ten list for sure- right next to the time he'd jumped off of the roof of the Burger Tank in Ducatel and shoved a Boomer right into the raging river, where it was immediately run down by a Cajun boat called _Lagniappe._

Nick frowned. Was he really thinking back on that fearful time in the hurricane with... _fondness_? That sealed it. He really was going crazy.

"...Maybe some kind of viral mutation."

The words yanked him back into his surroundings. Oh God, they were still talking. Now they were discussing the flu itself, in hushed, excited tones. Nick scratched his forehead with his thumbnail, keeping his eye ahead for threats and half an ear on the woods around them.

"I think it's probably a mutation of rabies, for sure," Christopher was saying. "All the symptoms fit: mania, aggression, delirium. It's spread through saliva."

"Have you seen a lot of bites on those bodies?"

"Look. It has to be, Amanda. How else could it spread so quickly?"

"But Chris, it could also be airborne."

"I guess, but-"

Nick sighed. "It's blood-borne," he said, not looking back at them.

"How do you know?"

"I guess that's just my theory."

"Yeah, I guess Nick has seen more than we have," Amanda chimed in. "So what do you think? Do you think there's a cure? Could they make a vaccine?"

"Honestly, sweetheart? I really couldn't give two shits."

That shut them up. Nick reveled in the silence as he pressed on.

Around noon, the fog finally dispersed, sent away by the sun. The temperature rose to a balmy, comforting warmth. Best of all, there weren't many zombies. There had to be people living out here first.

Unfortunately, a lack of zombies also meant a lack of shelter. The further north they traveled, the fewer cars they saw on the highway. By mid afternoon, Christopher and Amanda were beginning to lag, but there wasn't a sign of a house to be seen anywhere.

They spent the night in the back of an SUV with its seats folded down into the floor. Amanda clung to Christopher as they slept in a pose that was a twisted semblance of modern art.

Nick sat in the driver's seat and tapped a finger on the steering wheel. On the floor next to his foot, he found a cellphone. Out of curiosity more than anything, he flipped it open and turned it on- no service. The battery died shortly afterwards. He tossed it back to the floor.

For a while, he gazed out into the road ahead, the road he would have to travel tomorrow. God, he hoped he was going in same direction the others had. Out of his pocket he pulled the map of the coast that they had left for him, reading it in the moonlight.

There was still a long way to go to the marked safe zone in Maine. He was sure he was still in North Carolina, if the numbers on the highways corresponded. Nick traced a finger along the route he thought he should take. There was no way in _hell_ he was going to try to go through D.C., which, if the map was correct, he was now south of. It was probably filled with more zombies than he could ever imagine.

No, he had to avoid big cities. That last one had been a fluke. He was lucky to have gotten out of there, even if he had retained a pair of talkative slugs for his trouble.

So, he would take the long way round- through the panhandle of Maryland, up through Pennsylvania. Then east, to Connecticut, north through New Hampshire, then it would be a straight shot to the safe zone.

Nick stared at the map, eyeballing the distance from North Carolina to Maine. God, he was never going to make it that far. He'd be lucky to make it to _Maryland._

Fuck it. He had to try, didn't he? He had to find the others, mostly so he could punch all three of them. Right in a row too, Three Stooges style.

He settled his forehead on the edge of the steering wheel.

Assholes.

* * *

"You know, steroids might be able to fix that."

They were still on the road, still moving out of North Carolina. It had been quiet all morning- even the husband and wife had kept their mouths shut most of that time. Now the spell of silence was broken, and Nick was, once again, reminded that he was part of a collective.

Christopher had been the one who spoke, and Nick turned to him, furrowing his eyebrows. "What?"

"Your eye." The husband waved at his own face. "It looks like corneal scarring. You might be able to reverse it with steroids."

Nick shook his head. "It's permanent."

"No, I've seen this sort of thing with dogs. When they get eye damage from a bite or something."

"Well, that's veterinary medicine. It's different."

Christopher smiled. "Not really."

"It won't work."

"How can you know? Have you tried?"

Nick glared at him. Why did he have to _pry_ so much? "I've seen a doctor."

Christopher started to ask which one, and where, but then Nick quickened his pace and moved ahead of him, hoping it was enough for the other to take the hint. Yes, he supposed it would be useful to know a real live doctor nowadays. Except that the doctor was a zombie now. Nick only knew this because he'd been the one to blow him away.

But that had happened long ago, in another place and time altogether.

Never again. He wouldn't be lulled into a sense of false security again. Not after the ship.

Amanda suddenly ran ahead of them. They'd come to the crest of a hill, and stopped at the top, looking down below them. Ahead of them, the road stretched and snaked, disappearing into a distant mountain range. At the foot of the mountain they could see a little town.

Nick pulled his map out of his back pocket and read it, trying to figure out where he was.

"Those are the Appalachians," Amanda stated, pointing out at the mountains. "I've vacationed here before."

"We gotta follow this road down there, into the passes." Nick said aloud. "We have to go around D.C."

"Why?"

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. Patience, he reminded himself. "Do you know how populated that area is? We'll be neck-deep in zombies before we could see the Washington Monument." He expelled a large, frustrated breath, and said with deliberate emphasis, as if speaking to a young child or Ellis, "We have a better chance of survival if we avoid large towns and cities."

"Oh." Christopher was looking down at the ground.

They shared a few more granola bars- the last of them- and began down the hill.

* * *

Inside the tiny town at the foot of the mountains, Nick wore his ammunition stores lower and lower as he picked off the zombies closest to them.

"This place can't have a population over three thousand," Christopher yelled at him between shots.

"Three thousand zombies is still a lot of zombies," he replied.

From building to building they moved, scavenging what they could. The town had been picked clean for the most part. The only bonus to this was the fact that other survivors had been here killing zombies, meaning there were less for them to have to fight through. Had it been Coach and the others?

Nick finally put Amanda to work when he found a backpack in an old convenience store and filled it with the meager bits of food he could find, then gave it to her to carry.

It filled him with a fair bit of satisfaction when Christopher had glared at him for daring to make Amanda do something.

The wife, however, seemed glad to have something to do.

They climbed out of the convenience store together and moved forward toward what looked to be the town square.

A huge zombie came hurtling from an alley, shouting incomprehensibly as it pounded down the road. Nick heard it and twisted about, lifting the rifle, but then the zombie had him. The gun flew from his hands as he was lifted into the air, breathless, disoriented, and in an instant he was carried away.

When his trip was ended by his body being slammed into something hard and unforgiving, he thought he heard a _crack_. Bright lights discharged in his vision, but all he could see was the sky. He had barely managed a yell before the thing's hand closed tightly around his chest, effectively squeezing off any semblance of words he'd be able to shout.

Charger.

A Charger had gotten him, out in the clear open where he should have been able to avoid it. Could have, if he'd seen it coming.

He sucked in as much air as he could as he scrabbled against the eroded arm, scraping wildly with his fingernails. The hand brought him into the air and he knew what was coming next. His shoulders hit a hard edge and pain lashed through his body. He screamed, a breathless, choking noise, panic bubbling like hot acid in his throat.

Where the hell were the other two? Were they coming for him?

Darkness was creeping into the edges of his vision, and shit, he'd really thought he'd last a little longer than this. He could hear Amanda screaming. The zombies must have got her, he thought vaguely.

Again he was slammed, this time sideways into a metal object that toppled over. Above him the Charger was grunting, slobbering, yellowed eyes showing only a primal hunger. Nick wasn't sure if he could feel his legs anymore, but everything else was becoming numb, as if he'd been stuck out in a cold wind for too long. His whole body felt like a puppet with its strings cut.

Fuck, he thought. I guess that's it for me, then.

The hand slammed him down one last time and everything around him winked out like a broken light bulb.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my gleeful moon-walking bird, and Kit, my beta-reader/Spy. You're too good to me. Next installment: The Carrier. See you next week._


	4. The Carrier

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

* * *

Christopher hadn't had a good feeling since they entered the town, so he was less surprised when their situation had turned into an outright disaster.

The infected had rushed by him as a blur, its clamorous movement ruffling his clothes and hair as it passed. Christopher raised the shotgun and looked around to ask Nick what it was, but then he realized that Nick _wasn't there_ anymore.

He heard the man yell, tone sharp and high with panic, and whirled to see what had happened.

The infected was hulking, and bent over. One arm flapped useless at its side and the other was about the size of a small car. In that hand it held Nick, who was squirming and fighting even as it lifted him up and used him as a hammer upon the concrete and a nearby newspaper vendor.

Christopher moved, lifting the shotgun. Amanda was shrieking in terror behind him, a noise he fought to ignore as he fired. The gun's stock cracked back hard on his collarbone.

He pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened and he thought it had jammed, but then he realized he still had to pump it again. By the time he was letting off another round, Nick had stopped making noises, and stopped flailing against the infected.

The mutated creature, on the other hand, seemed unfazed by two rounds of point-blank buckshot. Christopher pumped the shotgun and fired again, and then again. After the fifth shot it finally went down, flopping over with a rattling grunt of pain.

"Nick," Amanda cried, jolting ahead. "Are you okay?"

He was unresponsive, face turned away from them and into the cracked sidewalk where he'd been pummeled. Christopher put the shotgun down and went to pry the monster's still-clenched fist from around the survivor's abdomen. It was a lot like wrenching a dog's mouth open.

After he got him free, he leaned forward, shouting the man's name. There was no reply.

"Is he dead?" Amanda queued with a whisper.

"No. He's breathing." Christopher was running his hands over the man's body, checking for obvious breaks. At the ridge of Nick's shoulder there was a gash, likely caused by being smashed into the newspaper vendor. He pressed his hands into the wound to stem the blood flow and turned to Amanda.

"Look in his bag. See if he's got any gauze, something like that."

The duffel's strap had been snapped in the scuffle. It was laying on the curb of the sidewalk. Amanda pulled it to her as she knelt down across from her husband. She pushed aside the empty magazines and water bottles and found a first aid kit, next to an old-looking pistol. Hands shaking, she yanked the kit open.

"Hurry, hurry," Christopher snapped.

"I'm looking!"

Impatiently, she turned the whole thing upside down and dumped all its contents out onto the ground. A few paper-wrapped gauze pads landed amongst the ointments and bandages; Christopher snatched one up and ripped it open, pressing it to the wound. His hands were already slick with blood.

"It's not too deep," he said, glancing at his wife.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Christopher grabbed a second pad, tossing the old one aside. "I think so." As he pressed the new one down, he looked over the pile Amanda had dumped out of the kit. "Styptic," he muttered. "I need a styptic, something, come on."

"What's a styptic?"

"It's a... it stops bleeding," Christopher said.

Amanda sifted through the pile, shaking her head. At the bottom of the pile she found a foil-wrapped pad, which Christopher promptly ripped from her hands.

"This is it," he cried. "Perfect, perfect."

He pushed the ragged edges of Nick's jacket aside and placed the pad onto the wound as neatly as he could. Underneath him, the survivor jerked, coughing once and mumbling something he couldn't understand.

Amanda sidled closer. "He's waking up."

"Good. Get him to talk." Christopher grabbed up a roll of tape from the pile.

Nick was twisting his head, trying to see with his functional eye. He tried to say something but it came out as a jumbled mess of syllables.

"It's okay," Amanda said, "we're here."

"Rochelle?" He was blinking rapidly. "Is'sat you?"

"No. No. It's Amanda and Chris."

"What the fuck happened?" he was asking, but his words strung together and it sounded more like, "whaddafuchappen."

"A... a big... infected thing came and... and crushed you on the sidewalk."

"Fuck." Clarity was returning to him now, and he looked up at her. "How bad?"

Christopher answered from where he was taping the pad down. "You've got a cut on your back and you hit your head, but I think you'll be okay."

Amanda looked at her husband, who gave her a thumbs-up.

"Can you stand?"

"Gimme a minute." Nick was trying to get his hands under himself. "Fucking zombies, Jesus Christ."

Christopher tugged him to his feet, where he rocked unsteadily for a moment before regaining his bearings.

Amanda was replacing the contents of the first aid kit. When she stuffed everything back into the duffel she handed it to Christopher to carry, who tucked it under one arm.

"Where's my gun?" Nick asked, eyes bleary as he looked around for it.

It was laying at the other end of the square. The old black rifle was still intact, and Amanda grabbed it up with both hands, turning it over. "I think it's okay," she called, jogging back to them.

"All right," Nick sighed, taking the gun from her. "Let's get going."

Christopher gaped. "What? We- you can't be _moving_ _around_, Nick."

"I've lost too much time already," the survivor bit out, pushing forward. "I have to keep moving."

Amanda stepped in front of him. "Can't we just rest a while?"

Nick shook his head, then grimaced at the pain it caused. "No. Can't lose any more ground."

"For a minute. Just for a minute," Amanda begged.

"You have a concussion," Christopher stated from behind them. "Nick, you need to wait a while. Your brain could hemorrhage if you don't."

Nick scoffed. "What are you, a doctor now?"

"I fixed your shoulder, didn't I?"

The survivor stopped walking, rubbing his forehead. "All right. All right, fine. Just for a bit."

They crossed the square and broke into a boarded-up ice cream shoppe, barricading a table against the door. Nick took his duffel back from Christopher and dug around in the first aid kit for a minute before pulling out a bottle of pills; he twisted the cap open and swallowed some of them.

Then he sat with his back against a wall and his head in his hands and didn't talk.

Christopher wandered into the back of the shoppe. He found a faucet that was trickling intermittent spurts and rinsed his hands clean of blood, hissing as the cold water touched the scrapes on his palms. He'd almost forgot about them until now. They seemed to be healing, but he couldn't tell much past the dried blood caked on his hands.

On a shelf he found a roll of paper towels. He dried off with these and brought the roll back with him to the front of the store.

Nick lifted his head as the husband entered.

"What are you doing?"

"There's a working tap back there. I was washing my hands."

Amanda seemed excited at the prospect of cleaning herself. She brushed past her husband and into the back as quickly as she could, taking the paper towels from him.

Christopher stood for a long time without saying anything before he went to Nick and sat next to him, against the wall.

"What pills did you take?" he asked, trying to sound nonthreatening.

"Hydrocodone."

"Where'd you find those?"

"A pharmacy. Back in that city."

"Are they working?"

Nick shut his eyes and sighed. "I wouldn't be talking to you if they weren't."

Christopher felt himself smile. He stretched out his legs in front of him. "What was that thing, anyway? That infected?"

"Charger," Nick muttered, tugging his gun into his lap. "Well, that's what _we_ called 'em, at least." He glanced over the rifle, pulling the slide back, checking to see if it still functioned. "'Cause, you know. They charge."

"Clever," Christopher said, raising an eyebrow. "Are there going to be many more?"

Nick, satisfied that his gun was unharmed, leaned it against the wall next to him. "Haven't seen one for a while. Others have been through here before us. Must've been a straggler."

"Yeah, it seems pretty empty right now."

"Count your blessings, sailor," Nick mumbled, folding his hands on his knees. The drugs had made him more complacent, less snappish.

Christopher certainly counted _that_ as one of his blessings.

* * *

Amanda re-entered the front room to see Nick cross-legged, torso bare, with his clothes bundled in his lap. Christopher was leaning over behind him, applying some sort of cream to the ragged gash. With easy movements, he began wrapping it. There was no complaints of pain from the survivor, either because of the pills or a high pain threshold. Or a combination of both.

"At least you aren't bleeding anymore," Christopher was saying, his tone light.

"I have that much going for me," came the grunted reply.

Amanda smiled. "You're pretty good at that, Chris." She sat down next to them. "Bet you thought you wouldn't be using your veterinary knowledge on a person, huh?"

Nick lifted his head a bit. "You're a veterinarian?"

"No, no. I'm not a _doctor. _I just own the drug company."

"How'd you get to know all this, then?"

"I worked at a vet's office for a few years. Picked up a couple things." Christopher tightened the bandage down and taped it tightly, smiling at his handiwork. "There we go. Good as new, buddy."

Nick was already pulling on his undershirt. Both it and the jacket were ripped from the earlier encounter. He didn't pay it much notice. "Uh... thanks. Christopher."

The husband and wife shared a smile. "See, we aren't so bad," the latter said.

"I guess not."

Christopher stood and grabbed up the old dressings. "I'm gonna go wash up. Got blood on me again."

Nick was leaning back against the wall again, more carefully this time. "Good thing we're immune, huh?" he joked.

Amanda and Christopher shared a look.

"What?"

Nick paused in stuffing his first aid kit back into the duffel. "Immune. You know, to the infection?"

Christopher screwed up his face. "I... I hadn't thought of that."

"Well, we'd have to be, wouldn't we?" Amanda said, her voice tremulous. "We've been going for days. You'd think... you'd think we'd have..."

"I'm not sure how it works," Nick's voice was quiet. "Bites or scratches or whatever. Pretty sure you need to get bit."

"Are you immune?" Christopher asked.

"What do you think?" Nick waved at the ruined part of his face. "I've been tested," he added on, tone sardonic.

"There's a test?"

Nick looked pained. "Yeah, a blood test. The military tested me."

Amanda heard the irritation in his voice and sighed. "Well, Chris? Do you think we're immune?"

Christopher just shrugged. "No, I think you're right, Amanda. We'd have to be to still be alive after this long."

There was a hint of doubt apparent in Nick's good eye for just a moment, then it was gone. "All right," he said, after a moment. "We'll stay a few more hours. Then head out again."

* * *

It was four hours later, and they were almost out of the town, when Christopher began to feel ill. He spiked a fever and stumbled about. Nick brought them to the barren loading bay of a grocery store and barricaded themselves inside, pushing a table against the back door.

Amanda settled Christopher down on the concrete, pillowing his head on her backpack.

"He scraped his hands back in the city. Do you think they got infected?" Amanda asked.

Nick was staring out of a back window, clicking some mechanism on his rifle. He said nothing.

Amanda brushed Christopher's hair out of his eyes as he shivered.

"It's chilly," he said.

"I know," his wife replied, scooting closer to him. "How do you feel?"

"Like I caught a cold," Christopher told her, a smile coming over his face. "I'll be okay. Just wanna sleep for a bit." He coughed for a while, and then rested quietly. Amanda pulled her jacket off and put it over him.

"Yeah, it's just a cold," she said. Her insides churned. "Let's just get you some rest."

* * *

Two hours later and Christopher had to be dragged to a bucket to throw up into. It wasn't food- not that they'd eaten much in the past days- but instead a foamy green substance. He slipped into a delirious fever while Amanda's anxiety turned into panic.

"Nick, he's so cold," she said.

He was sitting on an upturned trash can. "I know," he murmured. He was holding a pistol, slipping the magazine in and out slowly with one hand. It was the gun she'd seen earlier, in his duffel bag.

"What do we do?" Amanda asked, looking back at her husband. His face was pale and damp with sweat, and he tossed his head from side to side, mumbling incomprehensible words.

"Amanda," Nick started. His voice was uncharacteristically soft. "Come over here."

Confused, she stood up and walked closer to the survivor, who pushed the magazine into the pistol with a _click_. He regarded the gun, then looked up at her, some sort of quiet sadness lurking on his face.

Amanda looked at the gun and then his face. Her blood turned cold and her stomach seemed to have dropped to her knees. "No. No." She looked back at Christopher. "That's not what this is. That's not what it is! He didn't even get bitten!"

Nick looked away. "It'll be easier on him if I do it now," he said, words quiet. Amanda wished she'd misheard him.

"No. Nick. No. You can't. What if- what if it's just-"

Behind them, Christopher groaned something that might have once been a sentence. Now it had become a strained, animalistic grunt. Amanda turned to go to him.

Nick's hand was on her shoulder. "Don't," he said. She hadn't even been aware of him getting up from the trash can. "He's not your husband anymore."

Amanda felt tears on her face- when had she started crying?- and stared at Christopher. His skin had gone pallid. His muscles twitched with strange tremors. "Nick," she said, because she had nothing else _to_ say.

"Wait outside," he told her.

"I can't leave him."

"You have to."

Nick took her arm- the most gentle she'd ever been touched by this man- and he guided her to a side door. "I'm sorry," he said. He left her out in the fogged, empty parking lot and shut the door behind him.

A moment passed, filled with a tepid silence.

Then, a single gunshot that echoed hollowly within the walls of the store.

Amanda sank down to her knees on the concrete and stared out at the parking lot. Time passed that felt like a lifetime. Nick's warm hand was on her shoulder. She hadn't even heard his approach.

He picked her up, pulled her to her feet. Amanda couldn't look at him.

Nick took her hand and they walked away from the grocery store into the mid-afternoon light.

* * *

They'd walked in silence, neither saying a word to the other. Not a zombie in sight. Nick found a safe house tucked away into some trees on the outskirts of town; an old one bedroom flat.

Amanda curled into a corner and watched with a weary eye as Nick cooked something over a stove he'd cobbled together from a truck grille and a bunsen burner. He hadn't said a word to her since the grocery store. Whenever she'd caught his eye he'd turned his face away.

Time passed in the little safe house. Nick crept up to her with a plastic bowl in his hand.

"You need to eat," he said. Unspoken apologies filled his voice.

Amanda took it and ate it. She didn't know what it was. Some sort of watery soup, yellow and pale. It was warm, and it felt good in her empty stomach.

Nick crouched down across from her and ate his own.

Hours passed and Amanda had gone from quiet to just empty and tired. She stared at the blank off-white walls of the safehouse, eyes dry. There were no more tears; there was nothing left inside of her to let out.

The sound of shuffling began- Nick was disassembling his rifle, cleaning it.

Amanda looked over and watched him. The quiet unnerved her. There was no more Christopher to hold onto, to share a conversation with, to keep her head above the water. Just Nick, her own personal angel of Death.

She struggled to her feet and went over, sitting across from him.

"What are you doing?" she asked. Her voice cracked from the strain of her raw throat.

Nick looked up at her, and Amanda realized she had never noticed how green his good eye was. Or how the other looked like someone had stirred milk into a clear decanter. "Gotta keep my rifle taken care of," he spoke. Amanda kept staring at him, taking in details she hadn't noticed before. Lines of pain and worry that creased his face. She'd never asked how old he was.

He was fiddling with the slide now, shifting it in and out. There was something mechanically cathartic to his movements. His dark brown hair had fallen partially into his face; he didn't brush it back, only kept his head slightly tilted to keep it out of his serviceable eye.

Nick had taken the gun completely apart. Pieces laid out everywhere, like a puzzle. She watched as he started to put it all back together with learned, deft movements. Something she'd never be able to figure out. He did it like he'd been doing it all his life. Perhaps he had.

"Where did you come from?" Amanda asked suddenly, her voice just above a whisper.

Nick glanced up at her. "Hm?"

"I guess I never wondered. We... _I'm_ from Minnesota."

"Never been there." His words were quiet. The rifle was beginning to look like a rifle again.

Amanda reached down and lifted a part of the stock. It had his name scratched into it. She hadn't noticed it before, but then again she hadn't paid much attention until now. "Who did this?" she inquired, holding it for him to see.

He plucked the piece from her hand. "A friend of mine." His eyes did not meet hers.

Amanda thought back to all those notes on the safe house walls. "He was a good friend of yours, wasn't he?"

"Is." Nick's voice held no uncertainty. "_Is._"

"And you're looking for him, up north."

"Yes."

"What is his name?"

Nick looked at her, then. Underneath his usual, impassive exterior, she thought she could see sadness. "Ellis. His name is Ellis."

"Ellis," Amanda repeated, letting it come off of her tongue. "That's right. That was the name on those safe house walls. There are others, aren't there?"

"Rochelle and Coach," he muttered, looking back down at the gun. He was putting the scope back on.

"How did you get separated?"

Nick's hands on the gun stilled. His jaw worked beneath the stubble. "We were on a ship. For a while. I guess the government's trying to make a vaccine or something. Then... the zombies came. Overran us." There was a quiet sorrow in his words. "We tried to stay together. The ship was flooding. Sinking."

Amanda watched him try again for the rifle, then stop.

"The ship ran aground, somewhere. I couldn't find the others. Combed the places I could find. It was a big ship." Nick let out a soft laugh, without humor or merit. "Should have gotten off as soon as we hit. I think that's what they did."

"They left without you."

"They didn't have a _choice_," Nick said, sounding like he was trying to convince more than just her. "Where we landed- so many of those fuckin' monsters. So I snuck up the coast. Kept to the docks. Back alleys, you know." He sighed. "Thought those guys had forgotten about me 'till I found that care package, back at the city." Another empty laugh. "Man, I'd never been so happy to see their names."

Amanda smiled. "Christopher and I- we saw that package."

"Did you?"

"He wanted to take it all. I convinced him not to."

Something like appreciation flickered in Nick's good eye. "Well... thank you, for that."

Amanda nodded and watched him pick up the rifle again. He worked at it in silence and she watched, until every piece was put back in its original place. Nick ran his hand over the stock, smiled distantly. A quiet memory lurked on his face.

Outside the safe house, a gust of wind picked up, rattling at the boards over the windows.

"You ought to get some sleep," Nick said suddenly, glancing over at the darkness outside.

Amanda shifted, sitting next to him against the wall. "Yeah, probably." She scooted a little closer to him. So close she could hear him breathing, feel the warmth of his body near to hers.

He settled his rifle next to him. "Are you going to sleep there?"

"I..." she pulled her knees up to her chest, hugged them. "I just want to sit here a while. With you."

"Um, all right," Nick said.

Amanda stared at the opposite wall for a long time, mind a whirl with thoughts. The hollowness in her had turned into something else, something desperate. She turned her head and looked at her companion. The ruined eye was the only one she could see, and it was hooded.

With a little outward breath, Amanda reached out and touched his arm.

He started, turning his head to catch sight of her. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Amanda got up and shifted around, placing one of her knees on either side of his legs.

"What are you-"

She bent down and went to place her lips onto his, but he twisted away. With a scoff, Amanda leaned closer, breathing in the smell of him, of gunpowder and blood, of something wild and lonesome. She ran her fingers through the hair at the back of his head.

"Nick," she murmured.

"Amanda." It was the second time he'd used her name. His hands were on her shoulders, keeping a firm distance between them. "Don't."

"I need this. I need to feel like a person again." she breathed. "Please, Nick. Please..." tried to kiss him once more, but he again turned away, and, deflected, she brushed her cheek against the stubble on his face. "For me. Do this for me. Please."

"I can't. Do you understand? I can't."

"Why not?"

She watched the muscle work in his jaw before he fixed her with his good eye and said, "I'm a carrier."

"A c-... what... what is that? What does that mean, Nick?"

"For the infection. It's..." he looked away, forcing the words out slowly and carefully. "I can infect others, but not myself."

Amanda stilled above him. A slow understanding began to spread over her mind. An awareness. His reason for survival. Why he never got sick. And also why Christopher had.

"Your shoulder," she breathed. He looked pained. "You infected him."

Nick didn't speak.

Amanda felt sick. Not even aware of the disgust on her face, she stumbled away from him. He continued to stare at the wall, silent.

"Why didn't you tell us?" her voice was a whisper, but she may as well have been yelling. "You said it was blood-borne. And you were... and you were bleeding...! Why didn't you-"

"I thought you were immune," he ground out, catching her eye with his. "I thought-"

"We _told you_," Amanda's voice had increased in volume, "we had never _encountered them before now_."

Nick, again, looked away.

Amanda glared down at him, breathing harsh air through her nose. Without thinking, she moved and grabbed up his rifle, swinging the barrel down at his face. He flinched visibly, shrinking back against the wall.

"Amanda-"

"Don't talk to me," she barked. "You goddamn liar. I've been reading those safe house walls just like you have. The military's been killing _your kind_ for a _reason."_

He lifted his hands. "We're not-"

Amanda grabbed the slide and cocked the rifle. Moving forward, she pressed the barrel to his neck. "I'll make it quick. Like you did with my husband."

Nick gazed up at her, swallowing against the gun at his adam's apple. "If you're gonna do it, just fucking do it. But shoot me in the skull. I don't want to get back up again."

Amanda narrowed her eyes at the venom in his tone, then nodded.

She lifted the gun, and Nick took his chance. He moved faster than she'd ever seen him move, grabbing the barrel of the rifle and yanking it up and away from his face. She fired on reflex and it went into the wall, peppering them both with plaster. With a strong yank, he pulled the gun from her hands, and even as he was springing to his feet he was pointing the gun right back at her.

"Get back," he snarled. "Get right the fuck back."

Amanda now lifted her own hands, stumbling away from him.

He took a few steps backward, shouldered his duffel with one hand.

"Do not follow me," Nick said even as he was backing up to the exit.

Amanda watched him slip out and become lost to the nighttime.

She sank to the floor, her hands shaking. Outside, the wind was picking up in the dark. She stared at the closed door in silence.

She never went after him. Instead, she turned back, went in the opposite direction. Slipped into the loading bay of that grocery store and stood over her husband's body. The single bullet hole in his temple. A sort of silence crawling up her, eating away at her.

Amanda Nielson knew only this:

She was alone.

The wife stayed in the loading bay of that grocery store until she, too, became part of the world that was deep and howling and angry.

* * *

_(A/N: So there's the end of that arc. Thanks to Yggi, my after-hours morale booster, and Kit, my beta-reader/spider caretaker. Next installment: The Drifter. See you next week. Thank you for reading!)_


	5. The Drifter

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2. Thanks for making it though, Valve._

* * *

Nick was a drifter. He would slip into a town, play it for whatever he could get, and move on. Once in one area he would immediately begin to think about where to go next, and so on. It had been his life for so long he hadn't wanted to change it.

His current state of constant locomotion was more a second nature than anything else.

Everything had turned upside down. Instead of using trickery and quick-wit for money, he was skulking around streets and houses and cars like an alley cat to avoid getting killed. His weapons had once been his deft hands, his eloquence to make one situation seem like another. Now, his only armaments were a modified sniper rifle and the same determination that had kept him rolling from the start.

He regretted, now, his earlier lifestyle as far as heath care went. Long-healed broken bones from years past- of a time he could barely believed ever really existed anymore- ached and ached. He felt like he'd aged twenty years. Nothing from his life before could ever amount to what he'd been through now. Smacked in the jaw after sleeping with a woman he shouldn't have? How about getting punched so hard in the chest he flew thirty feet through the air and into a truck?

Despite a lifetime of movement, of unsociable passes through towns he could no longer remember the names of, he wanted to stop. He wanted to find a place and dig his roots in and never leave again. Perhaps he was tired, or perhaps he really was losing his mind.

Nick couldn't tell the difference. _Was there_ a difference?

Maine, he thought. That is where I'm going to go. That's where they are. I'm going there.

It repeated through his mind over and over and over again like a skipping record.

The night sky was overcast as he left the safe room, never once looking back to see whether or not the wife would follow him. He knew she wouldn't. It had been idiotic, really, thinking they were immune. Why had he let the husband fix him in the first place?

He'd done a pretty good job of keeping them safe from zombies, but had utterly failed at protecting them from himself.

Plus, the wife had tried to sleep with him. That had come from out of nowhere. Was the infection even transmittable that way? Probably.

Either way, he couldn't keep her along any more. It would be only a matter of time before he passed it to her, and then she'd be trying to eat his throat.

Knowing his luck, she would have probably mutated into a Witch or some shit and torn off the other half of his face. He kind of liked what he had left, and had no intent to lose it.

The knot made by tying the duffel straps back together dug into his shoulder and he scratched at it idly. He still had a bit of food in the bag, but he'd left the backpack with the wife. Whatever. He could find more food.

He walked for a few miles before coming upon a semi-truck jackknifed across the road. Glancing back once, he figured that he was far enough out of the town and away from the wife.

Nick climbed into the semi truck, setting his duffel and rifle down on the floor. From up here he had a pretty good view of the road until it twisted away into the pass of the mountain.

The aged mattress in the back of the cab squeaked when he settled his weight onto it. He dug out the secondary flashlight from his duffel. It flickered weakly as he twisted it on, but stayed lit. Nick set it on the tiny shelf next to the bed and tugged the map from his back pocket.

Now. Where was he? North Virginia, according to the signs.

Nick shook his head as he retraced his proposed road to Maine.

His eye kept skipping straight over D.C. If there was a way to get through there without being killed... it wouldn't take him long at all to catch up with the others.

He wished the map were more detailed, but only the larger cities were named.

His gaze looped from Richmond to Philadelphia over and over.

What wasn't he figuring out? Why did he keep going back to that?

It'd be suicide to go through D.C., so why was he still wondering about it?

Then it smacked him in the face.

The subway.

Nick lifted his gaze and stared unseeing out the cab windshield.

The subway.

If the trains were down, then the tunnels would be empty. Wouldn't they?

From what he knew, D.C. would have shut everything down in order to stop the spread of the infection. If the subway trains were shut down, then there wouldn't be any people down there.

No people. No zombies.

No trouble.

The idea sank down into his mind and stewed there.

He could spend weeks upon weeks detouring around the D.C. area, hoping he was taking the right turns with his shitty map.

Or he could try the subway tunnels and save those weeks traveling quietly underground.

Nick gently folded the map in his hand, the next path set in mind.

He could always turn around if there was a problem.

* * *

Nick woke up to the sound of dull pounding.

When he investigated, he found a single zombie beating weakly on the windshield.

He rolled his eyes, stretching and yawning. His shoulder ached and his head held a dull throb.

The zombie continued, jabbering nonsense. What _were_ they trying to say, anyway?

The survivor loaded his pistol and chambered a round, rubbing his face groggily as he lifted it.

He needed a shower.

_Blam._ Ammo conservation was important.

Nick found the oatmeal he'd stashed away earlier and ate it cold as the zombie's body slid bonelessly off of the hood of the truck.

Hm. At least it wasn't Christopher's wife. _That_ could've been awkward.

As he started off, he wondered idly if zombies recognized people they previously disliked. Would they attack with greater fervor, or the same as usual?

The rifle was cold against his back.

Maine. That's where they are, he thought. I'm going there.

* * *

Halfway through the morning, the road lifted itself and stretched into the woods. The weather was fair; sunlight glinted off the cars on the road and created dapple patterns between the leaves of the trees.

The vehicles were all abandoned or driven by corpses, or the corpses were near the cars they had once owned, or there were dead zombies under their tires. The bodies were bloated and gray in the calm sunlight; none of them fresh. This place had been empty a long time.

Obviously Ellis and the others hadn't gone through here. The cars were relatively undisturbed.

This was where he first saw the dog.

Nick was waist-deep into the trunk space of a Honda, searching for food, when he was startled by a loud bark.

He leapt up, hitting his head on the trunk latch. When he finally had himself looking the direction of the noise, there was nothing there.

"The fuck..." he muttered, irritated, rubbing his head.

He returned to digging through the contents of the car. Underneath a board, nestled next to a spare tire, was an emergency kit. Nick pulled it out and began picking through it.

Then, another bark.

He lifted his head with a glare, his good eye picking out movement a hundred yards away.

It was a large brown dog. He saw it only for a few seconds before it disappeared into the thick trees.

Nick frowned. He hated dogs.

Placing the emergency kit inside his duffel for later inspection, he crept off after it. No use having it around to attract damn zombies. What if it was feral? Or rabid?

Did dogs catch the infection?

"Here, puppy, puppy, puppy," Nick sing-songed, lifting the pistol in favor of the rifle.

No use wasting the good bullets on a damn dog.

Leaves crunched under his feet as he followed its path into the trees.

Another bark. Nick frowned.

"Shut up," he said. Then, sweetly, "Doggy, come here."

He couldn't see it.

When he was ducking underneath a low-hanging branch, it began barking again, closer this time.

And it didn't stop.

"Shut the hell up!" Nick shouted.

It didn't. It kept barking and barking. Nick was closing in on it now. Another few yards and he saw it in a small clearing, just yapping away.

Nick raised the pistol, tilting his head awkwardly to see where the hell he was aiming. He lined up his shot. "Good dog, just stay nice and still..."

Then came the hissing behind him.

He turned, and saw the crooked form of a Spitter- a goddamn _Spitter, fuck-_ and he jerked away just in time to avoid a face full of acid.

As he scrambled backwards he could hear the leaves and twigs on the ground snapping and twisting as the acid burned them up. The Spitter was pissed, now, and came after him with its hobbling gait and a gurgling shriek.

Nick fired at it with the pistol, missing five times before managing a pair of direct hits to the chest.

It crumpled, smoke curling around where it had fallen and burned away the loam.

He inched as close to it as he felt capable and gave it another bullet to the brain as it lay twitching on the ground.

Nick turned back to the clearing.

The dog was gone.

He grumbled all the way back to the Honda he'd been searching earlier.

As he was moving on down the road, he heard from very far away-

The echo of a bark.

"Yeah, ha-ha. Fuck you too, dog."

Nick carefully reloaded his pistol and kept it ready.

* * *

There was quite a bit of ground to cover before he estimated he'd reach the subway tunnels. A chill breeze swept in after the sunset, rattling the trees together. He was lucky to find an unlocked minivan on the road- breaking windows was not conducive to staying warm- and camped inside of it for the night.

Inside the emergency kit he found the essentials- flares, screwdrivers, a length of rope. A pair of roadside instruction manuals. A space blanket.

He also found enclosed a well-worn copy of a fiction book and a pair of women's underwear. Nick ruminated on why anyone would carry these two items in an emergency kit for a long while before deciding to keep them anyway.

The most important two items were the flashlight and Swiss Army knife. The flashlight even came with extra batteries.

Score.

The knife wasn't even brand-name, just any piece of crap you'd find in a dollar bin at the drugstore, but Nick was sure it would come in handy. Even if the blade wasn't sharp enough to cut anything.

He slept in the back of the van, underneath the space blanket. The wind blowing outside reminded him of the river under the table bridge.

Nick tucked his hands into his armpits and forced himself to sleep.

* * *

In the morning his alarm clock was the damn barking.

It jerked him awake and he fumbled lamely about until his confusion faded and he figured out what was going on.

"Fucking _dog_," he snarled, grabbing up his pistol, leaving the rest of his stuff where it was.

He exited the minivan and stepped into the milky morning light.

"What? _What? What the fuck do you want?"_ he shrieked at the dog when he saw it, standing right there in the middle of the road.

It wagged its tail and looked at him.

"You smartass son-of-a-bitch," he said, taking aim.

The dog barked once and sped off.

Nick fired after it anyway, knowing he would miss.

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" he called after it. He stopped firing and instead threw a few rocks. "Stop fucking following me!"

When the dog was gone, he was left panting and flustered and alone.

Nick rubbed his face and groaned.

He hated dogs _so_ much.

* * *

The dog was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the day, which was a relief. Unfortunately, this was made up for in the fact that he saw plenty of zombies instead. He ended up falling to the tire iron for a weapon, beating them back with quick, savage blows.

Nick found the source of the zombies near midday- a small town tucked away into the woods. He saw it from a hillside and took the road leading away. As enticing as the prospect of finding food and ammo down there was, it would be stupid for him to walk _into_ the waiting jaws of hell.

He hurried down the woodland road, anxious to get into less-populated zones. There were only mile markers to point him out where he was going. Nick kept in mind where the sun should be when he was facing north, and kept moving.

Above him, tall trees were swaying back and forth in a light wind.

That should have been his first hint of danger.

He knew the zombies were getting smarter and smarter- the more mutated of the bunch, at least. Especially the Hunters.

That was his second hint.

Both of them went completely ignored as he hurried down the road, eager to get further away from the town. The wind was stirring up dark grey clouds above him. From far away, he saw a lightning flash.

Nick couldn't remember if he should stay _under_ the trees or _away_ from the trees when there was a risk of being struck by lightning. He remembered something about electricity taking _the path of least resistance_ and went out into the open, thinking perhaps that meant it would strike the tallest thing in the vicinity.

Hint three ended up being, instead, a huge mistake.

It only took a moment for the Hunter in the trees above him to take its chance.

He never saw it coming.

One second he was moving down the road with the wind whipping at him, and the next he was face-down on the concrete. The wind was knocked from his lungs and pain replaced it. He couldn't even scream. The terror was there all the same, though.

Above him, the Hunter was snarling, ripping at his clothes, digging for the flesh underneath that and soon, the blood underneath that. The only thing keeping it from mutilating him completely was the rifle, still against his back.

He was trying to reach his pistol but it had come out of his hand with the force of the pounce. It lay useless in the road.

But the duffel_ hadn't _fallen away from him, and the tire iron was still inside.

He got his arms underneath him and rolled with all the force he could give, knocking the Hunter off of his back. It let out a noise of surprise, and while Nick tried to get his spasming chest to draw in breath again, he lashed out with his leg, knocking it back a few more feet.

The Hunter wasn't phased at all; before Nick could even get his hands on the duffel it was pouncing again. This time he was on his back, pinned, and the Hunter was going straight for his belly. Nick's thoughts were nothing but a fierce wave of panic and useless words, knowing what he'd see next.

He'd see those claws dig into his skin, his own blood in the air, maybe his guts spilling all over the concrete before shock took over and he'd be unconscious. That is, if his brain didn't shut down before that.

But none of these things happened.

When the Hunter raised its clawed hands for the killing blow, a massive brown blur took it down instead.

The weight lifted from the survivor's chest, and he brought in a hissing breath of thin, thin air. The Hunter was babbling in some sort of confused roar, and while Nick scrambled backwards and sought out the pistol, he saw what had saved him.

The dog.

The goddamn fucking dog.

It was huge from his perspective, teeth white as it leapt and closed its jaws round the Hunter's throat. There was such strength behind it, dragging the now-struggling zombie down to the ground, shaking it back and forth like a rag doll.

All the while, it was growling in tones that made the Hunter sound almost friendly.

Soon the zombie wasn't struggling anymore, just kicking its legs in some sort of reflex.

Nick was still sitting on the concrete, sucking in as much air as he could, rubbing at the slowly fading pain in his chest. He couldn't believe he'd gotten away from a Hunter with only bruises and torn clothes. He stared bewildered at the dog, the stupid _fucking amazing_ dog, who gazed easily back, standing over its kill like a proud lion.

"Jesus. Jesus Christ."

It wagged its tail- wagged its _fucking tail_- and _fucking barked._

Nick narrowed his eyes at the dog, stretching out an arm to lift up his dropped pistol. He pointed it once, halfheartedly, in the direction of the beast, then dropped it.

"Fuck," he murmured. "You just had to go and win me over with _that._" Gingerly, testing to make sure he hadn't broken anything, Nick got to his feet. The rifle was unharmed, thank God. Besides a draft where his hoodie had been sliced open, he was all right.

The dog stepped over the body of the zombie and trotted over to him.

"Damn, that's a big dog." It stood with its shoulders between his knee and hip, covered in thick tawny-brown fur. "How the hell does a person _feed_ you?"

Nick sighed as the thought passed into his mind.

"No. I can't keep you. I can't even feed myself."

The dog lifted his head and stared up at him. Its tail wagged back and forth slowly.

Nick waved a hand. "Go. Go away. You can't stay with me." He turned down the road, squinting as the wind blew into his face. As he walked, the dog stayed at his heels.

Lightning flashed; further away this time. Perhaps the storm had passed up this area.

Nick glanced down. Still there.

"I told you, _get going._ I don't have anything to feed you."

The dog didn't move away.

"Fuck. I guess you think you've earned yourself a friend? Smart ass."

It panted, tongue lolling out of a mouth filled with huge white teeth.

Nick glowered for the next few miles.

By then, it was raining, and it was night.

He took shelter inside of the first car he found- the tiniest little Toyota hatchback on the _planet_, naturally- which was, of course, locked. Nick broke open a window and slipped inside, leaving the dog out on the road as he crawled back and tried to get comfortable in the backseat.

It took all of two minutes for the beast to jump in through the open window. Nick nearly dropped the can of fruit cocktail he'd been eating out of surprise.

"What the fuck? No! Dogs stay _outside,_" he growled, setting his food aside. He leaned forward to push the dog away and crinkled his nose. "God, you smell awful. You been swimming in piss or something?"

The dog turned a circle and lay down on the driver seat, paws dangling down off the sides.

Nick sighed and sagged back against the seat.

"Fuck it then. Lay there in the rain. I don't give a shit, dog."

It seemed absolutely content where it was, and it irritated him to no end. He yelled at the damn thing almost constantly, threatened to shoot it, and it was still hanging around. Why?

He scraped the can for the last bit of fruit and tossed it down on the floor when it was empty.

The dog stared at him with its head on its legs.

"Hey, screw you. I told you, I got nothin' to share." He pulled out his space blanket and set his rifle down next to him, settling in for another damp, cold night that was beginning to remind him of swamps and shantytowns.

Still, the dog was staring at him.

Nick weighed his options for a moment, then bent down and dug through his bag. There was the can of Spam near the bottom; he'd found it earlier in another vehicle. The top of the square-shaped can came off with a _pop_. He extracted the large hunk of brown-pink meat and held it out to the dog.

It inhaled the Spam with a single bite.

"I hate that shit anyway," Nick said, tossing the empty can down next to the other. "We're even now. Don't say I never did anything for you."

The dog lay its head back down, licking slobber from its mouth.

Nick wiggled into the most comfortable position he could gain in the backseat of a hatchback, and sighed. "You know, I really do hate dogs."

He fell asleep to the drumming of rain on the roof of the car.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my demon-slaying support sentry, and Kit, my super-patient beta-reader and crafty knitter. Coming up next: The Friend. See you then!)_


	6. The Friend

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

_

* * *

_

Water. There was water. It was cold and salty, crawling up his chest, slapping painfully against his skin.

_"I'll open it, but you gotta get out."_

There was a woman. Dark-skinned. A friend. She was worried.

_"What about you? You'll be trapped inside-"_

_"I said, get out!"_

There was a door, oval-shaped. The handle was a big metal wheel.

Red lights that spun and spun, even when the water engulfed them.

He'd opened the door for her.

_"I'll find you again."_

The words were a promise.

_"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."_

They were a death knell.

_"I'm sorry."_

Ash on his tongue and smoke in his lungs.

_"Take care of yourself."_

Then water. Water, water, water.

There was a light.

Shore.

Sunrise.

Nothing.

* * *

Nick awoke all at once, body jerking as his brain caught up with his surroundings. The dream was gone already, burrowed down deep where he couldn't retrieve it. Blinking against the light seeping in through the car windows, he sighed.

He felt something damp and rough in his hand and turned his head. There was the dog, the big brown thing that seemed to have become surgically attached to his hip. His fingers were twisted up in the hair round its head, so tight that his knuckles had gone pale.

Nick pulled his hand away. It smelled like wet, filthy dog.

The animal in question turned its head and looked at him. Somehow, it had managed to slip down in the backseat with him, jamming itself tight behind the front seats. It shifted, and set its head on his chest.

"Ugh. Get off, God."

Trying to push it away was like trying to move a stalled car.

"Oh come on. You smell. _Move._"

Its tail was wagging again.

Nick crawled out from the backseat and exited the hatchback, stretching his arms. The dog barreled out of the car and took off into the nearby woods, tail and ears held up high. He watched the dog out of his good eye for a half-moment, then started collecting his things.

The storm had broken overnight, leaving behind only damp and the strange sweet smell of post-rain woodlands. The sun was still struggling to rise, light barely peeking over the tops of the trees. It was quiet; the only noise was the far-off warbling of a single bird.

As he was eating his meager breakfast, the dog returned to him.

"And here I was thinking you'd gone and left me for good," Nick said. The dog stared at the food in his hand, unblinking. "Yeah, I wish."

He split his breakfast with the dog, thinking it probably wouldn't eat oatmeal, but it swallowed the offering with the same speed and fervor as it had the Spam last night.

The map was still useless, but he kept it at hand in case he came upon a road sign.

Maine, he thought, and he set off.

* * *

When he started to see fewer trees and more cars, Nick figured he was getting closer and closer to the big cities. There were zombies, to be sure, just not enough to cause trouble. As he went at them with the tire iron, the dog held his own- grabbing them by their limbs and dragging them to the ground with its weight, setting upon their throats as often as it could.

Curiously, the zombies never directly attacked the dog. They were always after _him_. He wondered if it had always been this way, if they never attacked animals just on some sort of base instinct. When the zombies were killed and the quiet of the road returned to them, the dog would return to his side as if it had been doing this sort of thing all its life.

That afternoon, when it came rushing back after chasing down and destroying a straggler, Nick bent down and pet it on the head.

"Good dog." He wasn't sure what else to say. "You still smell."

It licked his hand.

"Maybe you were a police dog or something before this," Nick wondered aloud. "Protection. Maybe a junk-yard mutt." He looked down. It stayed in step right beside him. "What kind of dog are you, anyway? The only breed I'm familiar with is a _Pomeranian._"

His wife had owned them. They'd been irritating as hell, constantly yapping and nipping at his heels.

Perhaps his hatred of dogs was biased.

He found a few bags of canned food in the back of a Jeep convertible. They ate well that night, and slept in the back of a canopied Ford truck.

The dog kept inching close to him as he tried to sleep; he kept shoving it away.

"No," he repeated over and over.

But when he woke up in the morning from a dreamless, restful sleep, the dog was tucked up close to his back, and he was warm.

* * *

The map was still useless the next day. There were only mile markers that told him, at the most, how fast he was taking ground. Nick followed the road, trying to keep north. His path kept trying to turn right or left- east or west. For a minute he considered plowing straight through the woods, but then figured he'd end up lost, moving in the wrong direction.

The more time he wasted finding his path through these roads, the further behind he got from the others.

That is, if the others were still heading to Maine. If they were even still alive.

No, no. They were fine. After all, they had _each other. _They would take care of themselves.

If anyone could get that far, it would be them.

It was midday when the little mountain road turned and merged into a four-lane highway dotted with cars. He paused near the trees, staring at the open space ahead through the scope of the rifle. There wasn't a flicker of movement.

He could hear the soft sound of the trees swaying above him, and nothing else.

Nick moved up to the first car with the intention of picking through it, but there was nothing. Even the radio had been stolen from the dashboard, leaving behind only limp, trailing wires.

He got out and frowned at the dog.

"Someone else's been through here already," he said, his own voice stiff and awkward in the quiet.

Every car had been broken open and sifted through. There were a few bodies, but Nick couldn't tell if they were zombies or not, they were so decomposed.

There hadn't been people here for a long time.

The survivor looked down the road, squinting his eyes against the glare from the cars.

"All right. Let's go," he told the dog.

As he walked, he strained to listen for signs of danger around him. He glanced into the cars' windows as he passed by. Nothing in any of them. Some of them had even been stripped of their upholstery.

The quiet unnerved him to the point where he was humming under his breath to break it. Even the dog was acting strange, jetting forward at times as if it had seen something, and at other moments hanging close to his heels.

"It's all right," Nick said to the dog. "It's all right," he said to himself.

It wasn't.

They had gone perhaps a mile, and he was muttering a song in low, hushed tones when he heard it.

A deep, deep growl and the labored breathing of a nearby Tank.

Nick jolted to a halt, turning round, trying to find it before it found him.

How the hell was there a Tank out here when there was nothing else?

Well, no time to think about it.

Behind him, the dog snarled, and the noise of the zombie came after like an amplified echo.

It came barreling out from the woods, knocking down trees in its path. A raw, earsplitting roar came from its chest. Nick didn't even ready his gun.

He turned and ran.

The dog was still growling, standing its ground, hackles raised up high.

Nick looked back over his shoulder and screamed for the dog to run, knowing that it wouldn't. The Tank knocked a car out of its way as it came onto the highway. Its arms were all muscle, but a sort of undernourished thinness was showing in its torso and legs. The weight of its movement rippled through the ground as it bore down upon the dog.

The survivor kept running, feet pounding hard and painful on the concrete.

There was the sickening sound of two bodies colliding, and a high, loud yelp. Nick didn't look back. He couldn't. It was just a dog. Just a dog.

It was after him, now. Nick could hear it trying to gain ground, huffing as its body exerted itself.

Tanks were all about close-combat. He could outrun it. He would outrun it.

Ahead of him rose a bridge, gray in the fog. Nick tried to breathe deeper, tried to find more energy, tried to run faster.

There was a pause in the noise, a second of silence, and then a bright red sports car brushed past him and tumbled down the road.

"Shit," he cried, stumbling as he moved out of its path.

He dared a glance back. The Tank was lifting another car.

"Fuck you, fuck you, _fuck you_," Nick panted.

It hurled the damn thing like a man would hurl a tricycle. The car hit the ground a few meters ahead of him and rolled. Nick skittered backwards, stumbling on his own quakes of terror, falling down on his ass. Instinctively he curled up and shielded his head with his hands, bracing himself for the impact of the car.

Air whooshed past him as it rolled clear over his body, the dent created by the Tank's hands giving him the margin of space to avoid being crushed.

Lucky. Holy shit, was that ever lucky.

The zombie was coming at him again. Nick got to his feet, dodging round the just-thrown car. He looked ahead- the bridge was close. It was built over a lake or river, and beneath, the water shimmered brightly. If he could just get to the bridge- just a dozen meters across it-

The Tank was on top of him, swinging an arm wide, catching him along his side.

Air, air, air. He tumbled through it, the world tilting crazily. Nick landed mostly on his duffel, breathless but alive, and climbed back to his feet.

His legs felt rubbery and useless, but they moved even before he thought he'd be able to.

The bridge was so close. Again the Tank was closing the distance, its loud grunt of frustration ringing in his ears.

Nick was too scared to look back, too scared it'd be _right there,_ and the sight of it would be the last thing he ever saw. The ground was trembling beneath his feet and he fought not to stumble at the Tank's proximity.

He hurt, God, he _hurt._

But the bridge was there, and he was suddenly upon it. It was cramped with cars and he slipped between them, knowing soon the Tank would be flipping them over, and he would be crushed underneath-

There was a long and sudden drop in the earth that the bridge had been built across, and beneath was the water.

Nick threw his duffel bag down, then scrambled up onto the railing meant to keep pedestrians from falling off.

Not today.

The Tank was seconds away from him when he jumped.

Nick fell.

And fell.

And fell, realizing in the split-second before he reached the water that he still had the rifle over his shoulder.

He hit, and it felt like he'd been smacked by a truck, knocking the little air he'd gathered in his lungs back out. Nick sank and fought for the surface, terror gripping his mind- he imagined red lights down there, spinning and spinning-

Surface. He sucked in a deep, painful breath, then coughed.

It was cold and his chest _hurt_. Darkness was trying to close in on him. No, no, no.

On the bridge above, the Tank was screaming in frustration. Nick struggled just to tread water and drag in short, spasmodic breaths.

He looked up and saw its silhouette, movements awkward as it tried to figure out what to do.

Nick took a deeper breath and shouted, "Fuck you! You can't fucking swim, dumbshit!"

It jumped after him, tumbling over and over before hitting the water a dozen meters away, face-first.

The survivor paddled backwards, twisting his face away from the resulting wave of water from its impact. He turned toward the rocky shoreline and went for it.

For a few seconds he thought the Tank would come after him, but no, they _still _couldn't swim for shit.

It floundered in the drink for a long couple of moments, then sank.

Nick fought for the shore and groaned in relief when he finally touched it. He pulled himself up onto a long, flat rock and lay back on it, panting and damn-near sobbing as the adrenaline slipped from his body. Now he was cold, and tired, and he still hurt.

And he'd been more scared of the water than the damn Tank.

After what felt like a few hours, he finally pulled himself back into a sitting position. Gingerly, he hugged his ribs where the Tank had punched him. His ears were filled with water and his ruined eye was throbbing. The rifle was dripping, soaked, likely destroyed by the water.

But he was alive.

It was enough.

When he finally stood back up, limbs trembling, the sun was beginning to sink down to his left.

At least he'd been going in the right direction.

* * *

It took him a long time to climb back to where he'd left his stuff. He looked back down the road where he'd come from, half expecting to see the dog. It wasn't there.

Nick frowned to himself. What did he expect? For it to come running back to him after _that?_ It was probably dead. Definitely dead.

He started across the bridge and heard a bark.

"Hey, hey! Dog!"

There it was, standing between two cars, halfway across the bridge, waiting for him.

Nick jogged to it, feeling a laugh bubbling up in his chest.

The laugh died when the dog took a step towards him and faltered, one of its hind legs collapsing beneath it.

The survivor knelt down to the dog's side. It was bleeding from a deep cut that trailed from its knee almost to its toes. Nick, furrowing his brows, tugged open his duffel bag and took out the first aid kit.

He wrapped the wound as tightly as he could, but the dog wriggled a lot, and the gauze kept slipping down.

"Hey, don't do that."

It stared at him, uncomprehending.

Nick chewed his tongue for a minute before pulling off his tattered hoodie. It was ripped near to shreds from the earlier Hunter- now it was perfect for what he needed.

Shifting into a cross-legged position, Nick tore the damp cloth into strips. He used those to tie the gauze down. The dog licked halfheartedly at the dressing for a second, then left it alone.

"There we go," Nick said, petting the dog on the head. "Robbing the clothes right off my back, I see." The dog licked his hand and he felt himself smile. It was a strange sensation. "It's okay. I have another one."

He'd found it long ago, back in the city, in the care package left behind by the others. Nick tugged it on over the threadbare T-shirt beneath, glad to have something dry to wear, glad he'd dropped the bag before jumping into the river.

Nick stood up and so did the dog, who walked carefully on its injured leg.

When it began to fall behind, Nick found himself slowing also, letting it catch up with him.

Every time he looked down at the dog, it wagged its tail.

They spent the night not in a car but an RV this time, a dinky little Winnebago that had been abandoned along with the rest of the vehicles on the highway.

It had been stripped of most everything, but the mattress was still on the bed, and the water tank was still half-full. Nick filled his water bottles and dug around until he found a plastic bowl- which he filled for the dog.

"See, all this I could have for myself if you weren't such a damn robber," Nick told the dog.

He shared his dinner with it anyway.

* * *

Nick sat for hours trying to fix the waterlogged rifle. He took it apart and cleaned every inch he could find, but it was still jamming. Eventually, in frustration, he hurled it across the empty space of the Winnebago, where it clanked to the ground. The dog hunkered down as if it had been the one to be yelled at.

The pistol still worked, but it would never be enough. As it was, he at least still had the tire iron.

He sat with his chin on his hands for a while, glaring at the rifle.

"Piece of shit," he grunted.

The dog whimpered.

"Not you."

Nick reclined on the bed and sulked.

The dog crawled onto the mattress and tucked its head under his arm.

He fell asleep.

* * *

It was overcast in the morning. The dog was walking a lot better, healing at a faster rate than Nick thought a dog could do. He pulled the bandages off and left it.

Nick took the rifle with him. He knew it wouldn't be of any use, that it was just going to be unnecessary weight, but he liked it.

Ellis had built it for him, after all. It was something that tied him to them, that reminded him they existed, that they were out there and that soon, he would find them.

Nick scoffed to himself. Getting sentimental over a banged-up old gun. What a sap.

Well. He could always use it as a bludgeon if he had to.

The highway stretched on and on and on without turning or breaking. Cars were the only spark of variety in the landscape- everything else was flat earth, yellow grass, and trees.

That morning, he finally encountered a road sign. It was green and all it said was '_RICHMOND: 64 MILES.'_ Nick blinked at it, and then pulled the laminated map from his back pocket. He made a depression in the paper with his thumbnail where he figured he might be- sometime in the last few days, he'd crossed from North Carolina and into Virginia.

He hadn't seen a 'Welcome to Virginia' sign, so it must have been when he was in the wooded roads.

Nick folded the map.

"Further than I thought I'd be," he told nobody.

Richmond was going to be a deathtrap- he had to go around it. Perhaps eastward, closer to the coast, it would be emptier. He had to find a balance between country and city, and it was difficult.

If there were no people, there was no food. If there were people, there were zombies.

Nick kept walking.

* * *

He was still walking a few hours later, when the dog lifted its head and barked.

The survivor halted, pulling his pistol from the duffel.

"What is it?"

Up ahead, three figures were bobbing. They weren't zombies.

Nick's pulse sped up, and he quickened his pace. Was it them?

His eye traced two female forms and a tall, burly man.

He sighed, wiping his face.

Nope.

If only he were so lucky.

They kept approaching him, and he, likewise, did not break his pace.

When they were within earshot, Nick stopped.

So did they.

"We're carriers," the girl in front warned, her voice a thick Boston accent.

"So am I," Nick answered, but he didn't put away his pistol.

The trio shared a few hushed words, and then closed the distance.

"Morning," the lead-girl said. She was tall, and her face was dark, severe. Her hooded eyes glanced from him to the dog. "Where are you from?"

Nick shrugged. "Nowhere."

"Boston," the girl said without being asked, thrusting her thumb at the other two. "That's Debora," she pointed at the other girl, who looked rather Italian, "that's Joel." The man was huge, well-muscled, and a lot bigger than him. "I'm Lynn," the lead finished.

"Good for you. And how's the Infection up there?" Nick asked, not even trying to keep the _I-don't-fucking-care_ tone out of his voice.

"Rampant," Lynn spoke, her eyebrows furrowed. "I see there's a reason _you're _traveling alone."

"That's cute, sweetie. You know, I-"

Deborah piped up, cutting off what was likely to become a screaming match.

"What's your dog's name?"

Nick opened his mouth, then closed it. "Uh." He hadn't even thought of that.

The girl had knelt down and called the dog to her. It wagged its tail and went over, licking her hands.

"What a good boy." She soon had the dog on its back, scratching its belly. "What a good boy!"

"Robber. Rob. His name's Rob."

Debora continued to pet the dog, this time now cooing its- _his_- name.

Now the man- Joel- stepped closer. His voice was soft, almost gentle. "You got anything to trade?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Trade?"

"Food, weapons, anything like that?"

He pulled the rifle from his shoulder. "I can give you this."

Joel took it from him, turned it over in his huge hands. "What kind of gun is it?"

Nick shrugged. "I dunno. Some kind of sniper rifle." He ran his hands through his hair subconsciously. "I ran out of ammunition for it. Takes .50 caliber rounds. Powerful weapon."

Joel looked down the scope, then lowered it. "It's in good condition?"

"Yes. I kept it clean. It's capable of semi-automatic fire. I took down a Tank solo with that thing."

The big man raised his eyebrows. Even Lynn, now, seemed interested.

Nick smiled. "I just need a gun with ammunition, that's all."

Joel pulled a shotgun from his back- it was one of the tactical ones with the fold-out stock. "How about this?"

"Have you got extra shells? Like I said, I can't go without."

"Hey, Lynn. Let me get those boxes from your backpack."

Nick traded the broken rifle for the tactical shotgun and two boxes of shells. He stuffed them into the duffel and slung the shotgun over his back- it was much lighter than the other gun.

"Thanks," he said to them, and then he left. "Come on, Rob."

Debora waved goodbye to him cheerfully.

Nick smiled for the rest of the day.

* * *

_(A/N: Many tanks [get it?] to my time-traveling mask salesman, Yggi, and my beta-reader/Sniper, Kit. Also to whomever is reading this. I really appreciate every single view I get. Reviews 'are just gravy.' Coming up next: The Scavenger. In which our intrepid duo do some sight-seeing in Richmond, and mistakes are made.)_


	7. The Scavenger

_Disclaimer: I don't own Left 4 Dead 1 or 2._

* * *

As he approached Richmond, Nick saw dozens of military-posted signs similar to those he'd seen in New Orleans. They were all evacuation notices and warnings, telling him that there were '_infected within the area_' and '_to proceed to the nearest evacuation center_.'

On the horizon, there were thick columns of black smoke.

That would be Richmond, then.

Even from miles away, through the haze and heat rising from the city, Nick could tell there wasn't going to be much left of the place. It had likely been left to burn, leaving whoever was inside- zombie, human, whatever- to fend for themselves.

Nick soon found the welcoming sign to the city.

'WELCOME TO BEAUTIFUL RICHMOND, VIRGINIA,' said the bright, tall, cursive letters.

'OVERRUN,' someone had spray-painted over the city's name.

"No shit," the survivor muttered, raising his gaze back to the smoke-filled horizon.

Rob was staring ahead, his ears pulled down against his skull. Nick sipped from his water bottle as the scent of burning plastic and rubber drifted in on the breeze.

"I don't think we should go in there."

They needed supplies. Food, first aid, ammunition. They weren't going to find that in the outlying forests. Nick put his water bottle away and moved down the main road into the city.

"Just until we find some stuff," he said to the dog- Rob- who hesitated and paced, whimpering, behind him.

He was going to move forward until he found a safe house or supply dump, and then he was going to turn around. If he found a bunch of zombies, he was going to turn around. When the smoke and flame came too close to the ground and choked them, he was going to turn around.

The bridge that led toward the city was cracked in half, as if a great weight had been dropped upon the center of it. The two remaining sides sunk down toward the water.

Nick stood with Rob on the south side, studying the scorch marks on the concrete and the way the cars were pushed away from the site of the crack.

This bridge had been bombed, just like the bridge in New Orleans, keeping the zombies shunted back to one side or the other. Nick stared across the empty space, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He had a clear view of the city, now- the buildings were just husks, belching out the last remnants of smoke as their insides smouldered away into nothing.

Rob kept away from the edge of the bridge, ears still pulled back.

Nick glanced over at him. "Let's find another way in," he said.

* * *

They went around eastward, through a long street flanked on either side by crumbling buildings. Their fires had died long ago, leaving only splinters and dust. Nick glanced over them, thinking perhaps there would be _something_ that could have survived the destruction. There were bodies, big and small, gutted living rooms, blackened kitchens, and nothing of use.

A thick layer of ash had fallen, and with their steps they disturbed it, just as breath disrupted settled dust. Already Rob's fur was tinting grey on the edges.

As Nick traveled around northeastward, he came to be downwind of the breeze. Ash was falling from the sky, a warm snow. There was only the smell of burning things, a mixture of rubber and wood and skin. The smoke was blotting out the sun, allowing only a dirty orange light to bleed through.

Yammering, high-pitched voices reached them, and half a dozen zombies came out from a buckled house. Parts of their faces were burned all to black; some of their limbs were twisted and dark and charred.

It was a mercy to kill them, really, but he did it anyway- allowing them to nearly reach him before pulling the trigger of the shotgun. He could take down a couple at once that way, and avoid the waste of his time that aiming had become.

Rob hadn't touched them, hanging back behind the survivor with his tail hanging low and still.

Nick couldn't blame the dog at all. He turned over one body with the barrel of the shotgun and saw bites and scratches up along a bare, thin shoulder.

"They're starving," he said, and let out a breath. "Turning on each other." Nick tilted his head. Perhaps that was why he seemed to be finding less of the basic zombies and more of the mutated ones. Maybe they were all dying off.

The scuffle had sent the ash swirling thick into the air. It stung his eyes and mouth, and he turned to hurry himself along.

Parked next to a second bridge toward Richmond was a military Jeep, dead and silent. A body in uniform was still draped over the steering wheel.

Nick tugged the stiff body out and dumped it on the ground. On its belt he found a pistol, and in its deep pockets there were a couple of empty magazines. These he took before digging into the Jeep, pushing aside containment posters and folders marked 'G. RICHMOND/HENRICO/CHESTERFIELD.' Underneath these, there was a satellite phone. Nick picked it up and turned it over and found the power button.

The screen came on, bright and disorienting. Numbers ran up and down, colorful and cryptic.

Nick coughed, the ash irritating his throat. He turned the phone off and pocketed it.

In the back of the Jeep, there was a gray box marked 'MILITARY K RATIONS.' It had already been broken into, but Nick turned it completely over, and underneath a cardboard separator, he found eight MRE's.

"Jackpot," he muttered, and coughed.

He was running out of space in the duffel, and noticed he was still carrying around the extra magazines for the broken rifle. Nick tossed them out into the street and stuffed the rations into the leftover space.

Rob was whimpering again, behind him.

"All right, let's go."

They went the long way around Richmond, moving out of the ash-filled wind and onto the warm, blasted roads, north-eastward.

Nick paused for a drink of water, running some of it over his good eye, watery and irritated from the ash. Rob drank greedily, out of the plastic bowl, and looked expectant for more.

"Sorry. We have to conserve it, Rob."

Slowly, Richmond started to trail away behind them, the city carved of fire and smoke, and home to nothing.

* * *

Miles passed by, and they were out of the clouded ash and into the overcast skies. The air was clean, at least. Nick breathed it deep, and Rob perked up, trotting at his heels with his tail now held high.

"Yeah, that place wasn't good news, was it?" He wondered how badly D.C. was going to look.

Nick pulled the satellite phone from his pocket and turned it back on. The battery icon told him that the juice was half-drained, but other than that, he couldn't make out a thing. It was all numbers and symbols, and the symbols were alien to him.

He rubbed his thumb over the numbers and dialed one at random from his memory.

When he placed the receiver over his ear, all he heard was a shrill, angry beeping.

Nick pressed 'disconnect' and tilted the phone over. How was he supposed to reach someone?

He turned it back over and dialed 9-1-1. This time he hit a busy signal.

"Huh," he muttered, hitting 'disconnect' again.

The phone was hogging so much of his attention that he actually bumped into a car as he was walking.

Well, that could have been an easy way to get himself killed, he thought, as he sat down on the bumper of the car and continued to fiddle with the damn thing.

After a minute, Nick just started pushing buttons at random. There was a small image of three curved lines on the screen; he highlighted it and pressed the 'connect' button.

The phone burst with sudden, loud static, nearly causing him to drop it out of shock.

By the time he was collecting himself, a voice was coming from the speaker:

"..._An Emergency Action Notification requested by the White House. All broadcast stations will follow activation procedures in the EAS Operating Handbook for a national level emergency. The President of the United States or his representative will shortly deliver a message over the Emergency Alert System_."

Nick furrowed his brows. Rob tilted his head at the odd voice.

The President of the United States' voice came over the static, a voice from his memory, from another life altogether:

"_Greetings, fellow Americans, and know that I mean you- all of you. If you are not aware of the current crisis, allow me to explain: an infection has spread from the eastern seaboard to the west, to Canada, Mexico, South America. It has also been confirmed in Europe, Japan, and Russia. If you are among the infected, be aware that we are praying for you and working to find a cure. This Infection shows no signs of cease, but the symptoms are easily spotted: fever, vomiting, delirium._

"_It is of utmost importance that you get your family and loved ones to safety by following the CEDA guidelines on acquiring strong-walled shelters. Following this transmission there will be a list of evacuation centers dispatching throughout the United States. When it is safe to travel, you should go to these places._

"_My people- it is times like this that try men's souls, and know this: we will not fall underneath this. We will prevail not only as Americans, but as _men_, as _human beings_, as we always have, and always shall_.

"_God Bless you, and keep you safe. God Bless the United States of America_."

The voice fell and there was a short, shrill blare.

A mechanical, tinny voice spoke: "_Currently evacuating centers are located in_-"

Nothing was forthcoming but another series of beeps, and then, "_This message repeats. Four, five, six, four, two_."

Nick listened to more beeping. He'd heard the sounds before- far prior to the Infection, usually as a warning for upcoming storms or floods.

The noise stopped, then: "_You will hear the following Emergency Action Notification Message from the EAS decoder. This is an Emergency Action Notification requested by the White House. All broadcast stations will follow activation procedures in the EAS Operating Handbook for a national level emergency. The President of the United States or his representative_..."

Nick shut the broadcast off and rubbed his thumb over the screen of the phone.

Rob stared up at him.

"Well, that wasn't much help, was it?"

He turned the satellite phone off and stuck it back into his duffel.

* * *

For the next few days, Nick headed northeast along a stretch of highway. This one was just as empty as the last. He couldn't complain; for those couple of days his life was quiet, almost peaceful. Almost as if he weren't traveling across states to escape from a damn zombie plague. He thought of that movie with the mentally retarded guy running cross-country, but couldn't think of the name.

The actor was probably a zombie now.

How were things going in Hollywood, anyway? Perhaps they had it easier. They'd probably already created a reality series about it. Man versus Zombie.

The production values definitely wouldn't be cheap.

On the empty roads, it was hard for Nick to not let his mind wander.

He sang to pull his attention from thinking- lyrics that he wasn't sure were correct or not, to songs he wasn't sure he'd ever heard at all. There hadn't been much time in his previous life for music.

Nick was sure he had a crappy singing voice. Rob didn't complain.

He didn't turn the satellite phone back on again, although he thought about it multiple times. There might still be use for it, but not right now. And definitely not when he couldn't figure out how to use it. Maybe, if he found other survivors, he could trade it for something like he had the broken rifle.

Nick rested in abandoned cars and chewed the tasteless military rations as he walked. This road was just like the last- empty and lifeless. Which path had the others taken to Maine? Nick hadn't read a note or seen anything for at least a week.

A week was a long time to be alone, he thought, before he glanced down at Rob.

Well, _mostly_ alone.

Ellis was smart. He'd probably got a car running in his first day and driven it to Maine. Nick wondered if they were still expecting him.

It had been a long time. They likely thought he was dead already.

Nick glared at the horizon ahead. He'd just have to prove them wrong.

* * *

He knew he was approaching the D.C. area when he began hearing gunfire in the distance. Nick could recognize the flat _crack-crack-crack-crack_ of an assault rifle spitting. The low _choom_ of a shotgun.

At least _someone_ was out here.

It was windy and the temperature had dropped significantly since Richmond. Grey rainclouds were bunching up in the sky ahead of him. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep them warm, turning his head into the wind. Damn, it was getting cold. Was it winter already?

October. That's when the whole zombie thing had started. Then had been the journey from Savannah to New Orleans. How long had that been? A week and a half? He still remembered the date on the calendar on the cruise ship. The day before it had gone down and he with it- November fourth.

It had to be past the middle of November by now. Nick hunkered deeper into his clothes. He wouldn't be surprised if it started to snow soon.

Nick slowed to a stop as the highway beneath his feet curved westward, as if beckoning him to go the other way. Rob sat down at his feet, panting.

"Well, what do you think? There's still time to go back," Nick murmured.

The dog, as usual, didn't answer.

Nick pulled out the map. It showed D.C., Arlington- a pile of cities all bunched around the same area, on that little northeastern lip of the state. All he had to do was get down into the subways, down in the dark where he could creep along unnoticed.

He could do it.

Nick folded the map, put it away, and set off toward D.C.

* * *

Six hours later, Nick was jammed down between a dumpster and an alley wall, Rob squished behind him.

"I made a huge mistake, Rob," he panted, reloading the shotgun.

The first hours had been fine. There were zombies, but that was expected, and they had been able to handle them. Even when a Smoker had come lumbering out of a building and latched onto his arm, Rob had yanked the tongue off of him and gone in for the kill. It wasn't enough to make Nick want to turn back. He'd forged on, passing through suburbian neighborhoods and chain store parking lots without pause.

Fifteen minutes ago, he'd gone down an alley, following the quiet paths. He'd stepped out into a street and there he'd found the biggest horde he'd ever seen in his life. They'd noticed him immediately and swarmed.

The alley had been a bottleneck, choking them off from him. He'd retreated through it, firing behind him, screaming at the dog to stay back, stay back.

When he hit the street he'd come from, he ran.

These zombies were fast. They crowded behind him like storm clouds, their voices furious.

"Go, Rob!" he yelled to the dog, trying to keep him in the lead.

Nick sprinted around the next corner, pleading vehemently in his mind that there wouldn't be another horde there.

There was.

"Mother_fucker_," he screamed, skidding to a stop.

Now, behind him and to his right. Zombies everywhere. Nick whipped his head around for an exit point, found a souvenir shop. He crashed in through the window, Rob leaping right behind him. The zombies were clawing their way in before he even got past the first few shelves of goods.

Thank God, Thank God- there was a backdoor. Nick shoved it open and closed it behind him.

Now they were on a small street lined with tiny white houses. He didn't waste time, crossing the space between the back of the souvenir shop and the white picket fences that ran parallel to the road.

The fences were short enough that he vaulted clear over them. He heard the sound of the zombies ripping the backdoor apart, and didn't look back.

They fled to the backyards of the houses, through another alley, more yards and streets. The screaming of the zombies was beginning to dwindle.

Nick took another turn- oh yeah, he was good and lost now- and slipped between two brick buildings.

He stuck himself and the dog down between a dumpster and the wall, and there they were now.

The shaking in his hands was beginning to subside as he held the shotgun to his chest, listening for the sounds of the horde.

"Did we lose 'em?" Nick whispered, still catching his breath.

Rob squirmed uncomfortably.

"Just keep with me," the survivor pleaded, reaching down to twist his hand in the dog's fur. "Can't do this on my own."

Gunshots again. They were closer now than they had ever been.

Nick feared it may be the military. They'd shoot him on sight, for sure.

The pair stayed cramped in that space for hours, and they didn't move until Nick was absolutely certain that the horde wasn't nearby. Even then, he was moving with slow, jerky steps, peering around walls and buildings this time instead of wandering out into the open, like before.

"Call me an idiot, but I didn't think there would be that many out here."

Rob didn't call him anything. He wagged his tail and nudged his elbow.

Nick took paths that looked unfamiliar, not wanting to loop back and be exactly where he'd started. It was slow going. The sun was beginning to set now, and he wasn't even sure where the hell he was. For all he knew, he wasn't even in D.C. yet.

They came upon a safe house- he hadn't seen one of those since he'd been with Christopher and Amanda- and took shelter inside. The gunfire was still erupting all over the place.

"Damn warzone down here," Nick sighed, leaning back against a wall.

He read the graffiti on the walls as Rob rested next to him.

"_THIS PLACE IS DEATH."_

In reply:

_"Yeah no shit Sherlock, what are you 12"_

Another reply:

_"And what is this"_

Nick kept reading.

_"it's the zombee apokalipse_

_i am taking everything!11"_

There was an arrow pointed at the number, and the letters '_WTF._'

A pile of replies had been written below.

_"You idiot, it's 'Apocalypse.'"_

_"HOW DID YOU EVEN LIVE THIS LONG"_

_"Don't they teach you kids proper spelling?"_

_"I think I just shot my teacher so I doubt it matters anymore."_

There was nothing from Ellis or the others. Nick hadn't expected there to be. After all, they were smart enough to _not_ go through D.C.

Or they were dead.

No, no. That just wasn't possible. Coach was a tough son-of-a-bitch. He would be fine. Rochelle had them. And Ellis was Ellis.

They were fine. They had to be.

Rob buried his head in the crook of his arm.

"Yeah, I know."

The safehouse was stripped bare. There wasn't even an ammo dump. Nick poured the dog some water and ripped open one of the rations. He'd gone through about half of them so far, eating as little as he could. It was about all he could do to make them last longer.

He gave Rob the peanut butter and suppressed his laughter as the dog licked it from the roof of his mouth.

Nick read the walls of the safe house until it was too dark to see, then he curled up with his back to the wall and his head on his arm. Rob tucked himself against his chest, and they rested. The noise of the bullets spitting outside kept him awake. Every time it seemed like he was finally about to drift off, somewhere outside a machine gun would start snapping and he'd be right back where he started.

Eventually, he did drift off, but he only became aware of it when a fire-filled dream shocked him awake, and when he opened his eyes, a soft gray pre-dawn light was coming in through the windows.

It was calm, quiet.

Nick sighed, pushing himself up from the floor.

Another day lay ahead of them.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my soundtrack provider and all-around good friend. Many thanks to Glue for stepping in as a beta this week. And thank you to my Steam group, who came up with suggestions for safehouse graffiti.  
_

_I hope you're enjoying this so far. Feel free to correct me on my knowledge of the East Coast area. I'm sure it's not 100% accurate. And as always, thank you for stopping to read my little story._

_Coming up next: The Follower. In which Nick goes underground and listens to some music.)  
_


	8. The Follower

They left the safe house just after dawn, stepping out into the sickly pale light. There was rattling gunfire in the distance. Nick yawned. He turned until the sunrise was on his right side and stared at the buildings that rose before him, trying to memorize their structures before starting off.

As he was walking, he thought he could see a tall spire, stark against the gray sky.

Nick had never visited the Washington Monument before.

Around mid-morning he found a sign that was pointing the way to the subway- or the Metro as it seemed to be called here. Nick followed the signs as well as he could, backtracking when he heard close gunshots or the cries of the infected.

He'd nearly missed the entrance to the Metro station the first time around. There was a bright red Hummer parked almost on top of the stairs that headed down. Spray painted on the doors was a big _'STAY AWAY.'_

Initially, he believed the sign meant to stop moving further into the city. Then, as he got closer, he could see the large concrete stairwell heading down into the dark.

Nick didn't hesitate. He climbed over the Hummer- Rob squeezed underneath- and descended.

"Too late to turn back," he whispered.

It was dark. He turned on the flashlight and taped it to the barrel of the shotgun.

Nick entered the station and pointed the light to and fro. There were bodies on the ground and they smelled horrible. Otherwise, it was empty.

There had been a map, once, sitting here before the tracks, but someone had burnt it to a crisp.

"Awesome," Nick breathed.

He stood on the edge of the station and looked down the rail tunnel that ran left and right to him. A breeze was blowing through it, carrying the faint smell of rot.

"Well, Rob?" he pointed the light down to the dog. "Which way?"

He looked nervous.

"Let's follow this breeze," Nick said, hopping down to the tracks, the dog jumping down behind him without pause.

There was a dull sound above them. More gunfire, maybe. Nick settled his feet in the gravel of the tunnel and sucked in a deep breath.

If Coach were here, he would be quoting the Bible.

Ellis would be running headfirst into the darkness.

Rochelle? She wouldn't have gone down here.

"Though I walk through the valley," Nick muttered, remembering swamps and pontoon boats.

He began to move, following the bobbing of the flashlight ahead of him. The tracks were bare and not even the emergency lights were lit. Either D.C.'s power grid had gone down, or whoever was left didn't think the subway was important enough to continue feeding power to.

In the darkness and the silence, Nick felt like he could walk off the edge of infinity and he wouldn't have noticed. The only thing separating him from the shadows was the light on the end of his gun. He gripped hard to it, trying not to think about the fact that the only sound was his own breathing and the staccato noises in the world above him.

Nick halted. Why was it so quiet?

"Rob?" he called. Even the slight sound of his voice echoed down the tunnel.

He turned the light about, and the tunnel was empty.

"Rob!"

His voice jumped back to him.

Nick turned and began walking back. "Where the hell did you go? Rob!"

When his voice echoed this time, it was joined by familiar, inhuman cries.

He flicked the light around, searching for them. When they came, it was from the direction he'd entered. There must have been side tunnels that he'd passed by without noticing.

Nick blasted them back as they swarmed, the shotgun creating an impossibly loud noise as it fired. Luckily for him, there weren't many, and soon they were all laying in strange and abstract positions on the tracks as his flashlight threw their monstrous shadows against the tunnel walls.

He turned about, ears ringing. In the clamor, he'd lost track of which direction he was facing.

"Well _fuck_," he hissed.

He turned one way, then the other. Neither side of the tunnel looked any different.

Nick stood still and tried to feel the breeze. Nothing.

With a sigh, he started walking in the direction he was facing.

Where the hell was his dog, anyway?

Worry chewed at his gut and he ignored it. Rob could take care of himself until they met back up. He'd probably smelled water or something and gone after it. Didn't dogs do that?

Nick was afraid to call out again. He was running out of shells.

He walked for what felt like an hour or two, and then he saw a dim light. Approaching slowly, he stayed to the edge of the tunnel wall. It seemed pretty empty.

When he reached the light, it turned out to be a station. It wasn't the station he'd entered through. There were skylights above him, and he could see the rain clouds outside.

Nick climbed up to the station floor. There weren't many bodies here, and when he began across he saw why:

Someone had sealed this exit- or the exit had been bombed. A pile of rubble cut off the path up the stairs. Nick glanced over it, then turned away.

At least he knew which direction Rob was in, now.

He saw another map- burned, just like the last. At its base there was a body.

It was female, uninfected, fresh. Nick bent down and began searching it.

Something cold and metal was pushed against the base of his skull, and he stiffened.

"Drop the gun." A man. Older.

Where the fuck had he come from?

Nick brushed his finger over the trigger of the shotgun, then slowly lay it down.

"Good. Get up."

He stood, and the object was pressed harder against his head. Definitely a gun. Nick raised his hands in a nonthreatening gesture.

"Nobody needs to get shot," he said, trying to stay calm.

"Shut up. Turn around."

Nick complied. He saw the weapon pressed against him- a lever-action rifle- as it was pushed under his chin. The wielder was a middle-aged man, maybe older, hair thinning and grey. His eyes were nervous behind thick glasses and his mouth was set in a tight, white line. There was a chubbiness to him that whipped a feeling of envy through Nick's thoughts.

"What are you doing down here?" the man asked, words tumbling out rapid-fire.

"Passing through. Just passing through."

"How about her? The girl? What happened?"

Nick blinked. "She's not one of yours?"

"No. She's not." The man didn't move his eyes from Nick, and cocked the rifle, the lever action clicking harshly in the half-darkness. "What are you? Military? CEDA?"

"Neither of those," Nick said, keeping his voice low, soft. He swallowed. "Look, just put the gun down-"

"Don't tell me what to do. Don't you ever tell me what to do."

"All right, that's fine-"

"That's enough. Be quiet."

"I'll just go, okay? Lower the-"

"_I said, shut up!_" The man jammed the barrel against his neck, hard. His eyes were wild as they searched Nick's face. "Those scars. You're infected, aren't you?"

"No."

"Carrier?"

Nick swallowed again. "Yes."

"That's what the last guy said. That's what he said and then he turned on me. While I was sleeping." The stranger's words were sticking together half the time, getting harder and harder to decipher. "I put- I put this rifle in his mouth and he was laughing. Laughing at me."

Nick stared at him. He wished his dog were here.

"They laugh a lot. In the dark. When you can't see 'em. They _know_."

The man's stream of words paused and a shrill giggle erupted from his chest.

"Can you believe it? I think I'm the only sane one left."

He continued to laugh, and the noise echoed through the station.

There was a howling reply from one of the black tunnels.

Nick whirled about, trying to see where it was coming from. It was hard to tell.

"Can you hear them?" the man spoke, as his amusement died. "I can hear them."

They came swarming from the tunnel to their right. Nick backpedaled, moving to where he'd placed the shotgun down. The older man turned his rifle to the horde and fired away.

Nick reached his shotgun and lifted it, blasting back the closest zombie.

The man started singing.

"_You've got your ball, you've got your chain..."_

The shotgun bucked back against his shoulder as he fired. The noise of the guns and screaming bounced all the way up to the roof and back down, but the man's loud, clear song pierced through it all.

_"Tied to me tight, tie me up again..."_

They kept coming, the zombies, attracted to the sounds. Nick ran out of rounds in his magazine and paused to reload. One of the zombies came too close and he lifted a leg, kicking it square in the chest. The stranger turned and blew its brains all over the tile floor, not once pausing in melody.

_"Who's got their claws in you, my friend? Into your heart, I'll beat again."_

The shotgun was ready again. Nick racked a shell and pulled the trigger.

_"Sweet like candy, to my soul..."_

Noise behind him. When he turned he found a pile of zombies crawling out of the opposite tunnel. They swarmed like hungry, feral dogs, snarls drowning out the sound of the man's singing. Nick shoved them back with the stock of the shotgun, almost preferring their noise to the undulating song of the stranger.

He could not carry a tune.

There were many of them. Nick caught a few blows to his arms, his sides, before felling them. As he was retreating, he bumped backs with the man.

_"Oh, when you come crash into me..."_

The zombies were thinning now. Another series of shots from the stranger's rifle, and they were done.

_"And I come into you."_

Nick busied himself with reloading the shotgun.

The stranger had stopped singing. He turned to him, and lowered his rifle. "I guess I shouldn't shoot you, huh?" There was a strange grin on his face, twisting one side of his lips.

"I just want to get through the subway," Nick spoke with caution, keeping his finger on the trigger.

"It's not a subway," the man clarified, puffing out his chest proudly. "It's the _Metro._"

"All right. Fair enough." _Whatever you say, pal_, he thought.

The stranger approached him, sticking out a hand. "My name's Gregory."

Nick shied away. "I can't shake the hand of someone who just threatened to shoot me."

Gregory's smile fell. "I'm not going to shoot you. I was being careful. Careful." He laughed. "Why would I shoot a person who just helped me kill a pile of zombies, anyway?" He came closer, hand still outstretched. "You can trust me. I only shoot military, CEDA, and zombies. Oh, and rats. I hate rats."

As quickly as he could, Nick shook the man's hand. His skin was clammy and cold.

"What's your name?" Gregory asked.

"It's..." he pondered giving the man a fake name, "Nick. I'm Nick."

"Nick. All right. What are you doing down here, anyway?" Gregory asked, walking through the bodies as someone would walk over river rocks.

Nick didn't follow him. "I'm heading north."

"If you're trying to get north, then you're going the wrong way." The man pointed down the tunnel- the one he'd entered from. "You'll wanna take the Yellow Line. Switch over at Red."

"I don't know where that is."

Gregory turned. The grin was inching its way back to his face. "You're lost?"

Nick didn't answer.

"You are, aren't you?"

"Look, I don't need-"

"I can lead you out," Gregory said.

Nick felt like he'd just received a death sentence.

"Come on, Nickie. Just follow me. Ol' Greg will get you out of here."

Glancing back at the other tunnels, Nick felt a deep and painful feeling of dread.

_I'm going to die down here_, he thought, and walked after Gregory.

* * *

The older man led him first to a small room. The door had been replaced by a heavy steel partition; the old one still lay against the wall, marked 'CUSTODIAN.'

He pulled the steel door open. This was obviously his own little safe-house. It was a tiny, tiny space, but it was filled with cardboard boxes, a folded cot in one corner. The walls were scrawled with jagged letters in languages he didn't recognize.

The smell reminded Nick of the sewer in New Orleans. He crinkled his nose and hovered close to the door.

Gregory pulled down a box and began digging through it. He was humming a fragmented tune under his breath, the same string of notes over and over.

"Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha," he sing-songed, lifting out a pair of heavy parcels. He stood. "Gotcha a gift, here, Nickie."

Nick took them warily. Both were filled with shotgun shells- one buckshot, the other slugs. As he tilted the boxes over, reading them in the light pouring through the door, Gregory stood and watched.

"For your shotgun," he explained needlessly.

He put them in his duffel bag. "Thanks."

Gregory had a small, satisfied smile on his face. He turned away, and bent down near a backpack on the ground.

Nick looked back out at the station. Worry gnawed at him. Where was Rob? Surely the zombies hadn't gotten him. Was he lost, too?

"Good to go," Gregory said, appearing next to him suddenly.

Nick shrank back, on reflex and on the thick, cold feeling of fear in his stomach.

"We're gonna take the Yellow Line," the older man said, strolling ahead. He pointed down the dark throat of the tunnel on their right. In his left hand he held a large black flashlight, which he clicked on and turned down into the dark. "This way. Come along."

Nick kept his own light turned on as he trailed behind the older man.

The Yellow Line tunnel looked exactly like the last one he'd traversed. Gregory walked ahead in front of him, head held high with confidence.

"_Say, hey, Daisy Mae_," he sang brightly, "_how many children have died today? Say hey, Daisy Mae, how many children have died today? Say hey..._"

Nick chewed his tongue, then steeled himself and raised his voice. "Why are you singing?"

Gregory turned and began speaking, all the while never breaking stride, walking backwards down the tunnel. "It's a song I made up. Do you like it?"

_No_, Nick thought, _you crazy prick_. "I guess," he said.

"_Say, hey, Daisy Mae, how many children have died today? They're down by the tracks of the train, skull and face and eyes and brain_." He grinned widely and laughed. "That's all I have. Can't think of any more lyrics."

"Okay, then."

Gregory about-faced and kept walking.

Nick was shivering, but he wasn't at all cold.

* * *

Gregory had sung the song twenty times, by Nick's count, when a scratching sound came down the tunnel. The older man's voice died sharply, and he raised the rifle with one hand while shining the flashlight with the other.

Nick stepped up alongside him, shotgun ready.

He heard a bark.

"Rob!" he called.

The dog came into the light, loping down the tracks, tail wagging, ears up.

"Holy _shit_," Gregory cried, stuffing the flashlight in his armpit, cocking the rifle.

Nick gasped, leapt, and shoved the barrel of the man's rifle down. "No! No, don't shoot him. Don't shoot him, he's with me."

"You said you were alone!"

"No, I didn't. I never said that."

Rob crossed the space to Nick's side. The survivor placed himself between the dog and the older man, keeping the shotgun ready.

Gregory had hate in his eyes. "What is _that_?" he asked, but he didn't raise the gun.

"My dog," Nick explained. "He's friendly, see?"

"You sure he's not infected?"

"I don't think animals can catch it."

Gregory cocked his head in a strange way, reminding Nick of how a bird would tilt its head with curiosity. His pale, wide eyes stared at the dog from behind the thick eyeglasses.

"Look, he won't bother you," Nick said, and the older man's eyes drew to his face. Good. Keep his attention. "He only attacks zombies," he continued, thinking for a second, "and rats."

Gregory's eyebrows drew up. "Rats," he echoed, like a child learning words for the first time.

"Yes, yeah. Rats. Eats them."

"I don't like rats," Gregory stated.

Nick nodded. "See, he's harmless." He glanced down; Rob nosed him in the elbow.

They stood there for a long minute or so, with Gregory appearing to mull over thoughts one at a time in his mind. Nick was edging backwards, trying to give him space, while also creating more for himself.

All at once, the older man sagged, as if given a sedative.

"Right. A dog. That's okay. He's kinda cute."

Gregory turned away with a tiny little smile, and continued down the tunnel.

Nick let out a long, deep breath and wiped his sweating hands on his jeans. He looked down at Rob, and whispered, "Don't you ever wander off again."

The dog wagged his tail faster and rubbed his muzzle into the hand Nick held out.

"Good boy. Come on."

And Gregory began his self-written song again, like a beacon in the darkness.

* * *

It felt like a day had passed. Nick figured in reality, it was only about half that. Down in the tunnels, it was slow going. Sometimes Gregory would just stop, for no apparent reason except to stare at something Nick couldn't see.

Right now was one of those times. The older man was gazing up at the ceiling, flashlight pointing up. Nick saw only concrete and wiring.

"Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight," Gregory was whispering.

"Are you counting your steps?" Nick asked, fighting to keep his voice low and calm.

"No. Stations. Ferns. Thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four."

Nick shook his head. Irritation warred with the anxiety in his mind. He had to keep moving. He couldn't stop and take a breather every time this man wanted to chant random numbers to himself.

In the end, his irritation won out.

"Gregory, can we keep moving? Please?"

"Busy right now," he whispered. "Fifty-five."

Nick came closer. "Hey. I really need to get out of here, so can we-"

"_Eighty-nine!_" Gregory screamed, shrill and sudden, drawing his eyes down to Nick's. "I'm _busy!_"

Nick stood his ground. "I need to get out of here," he repeated.

"A hundred forty-four. You child." Gregory lifted his gun and struck him across the face with the side of the barrel.

He stumbled backwards, the sting creating a terrible flare of anger in his mind. Rob shied away, even though Nick thought at once the dog would go on the offensive. So badly, he wanted to lift his shotgun and just shoot the man.

But then he would be stuck in the middle of the D.C. Metro, and who the hell knew where he was right now?

"Lie down for a bit, Nickie-boy," Gregory spoke, pointing the flashlight down at him. "You're being a pest."

Nick squinted at the light, rubbing his cheekbone where it had been struck. He wasn't bleeding, but he knew from the pain he was going to have a nasty bruise. The anger in his thoughts he willed to ebb back.

"_Say, hey, Daisy Mae..._"

Christ.

He moved back until he was leaning against the tunnel wall and slid down until he was sitting, waiting for Gregory to come out of whatever state of mind he was currently occupying.

Nick dragged his hands through his hair and sighed.

After another round of _Daisy Mae_ and another number sequence, Gregory shook his head, lowered his flashlight to point down the tunnel, and started off.

"Cute dog," he kept saying, looking down at Rob. "Cute dog."

"I guess so," Nick agreed wearily.

They had been walking at a decent, set pace for about an hour when Gregory veered off to one side. He pointed his flashlight up the lip of the tunnel wall, where a metal service door stood.

"Here we are. Hotel Ritz."

Gregory climbed up onto the lip and pushed the door open.

Inside, it was dark and cool. The older man was familiar with it; he crossed into the dark and turned on a lamp operated by car battery.

Nick blinked as his vision adjusted to the change, glancing quickly around the room. There was a massive coil of machinery at the end of it, which he presumed was once used to run the trains. Where he stood there were the things he'd come to expect in a safe room: a table, chairs, some rolled-up sleeping bags on the floor. A high, slanted skylight showed only darkness outside.

Gregory laid his rifle down on the table and sat, letting the backpack slip from his shoulders.

"Make yourself at home," he said, sounding all the world like a friendly, affable neighbor. "We'll stay here for the night. Gonna be a while before we get to the Red Line."

Nick pulled out a chair and sank into it. He didn't put his shotgun down, and kept it in his lap.

"How far?" he asked, simply, and he stared at the walls in an attempt to avoid eye contact with the man.

"Another day, I should have you out of here."

_It wouldn't take so long if you didn't stop every half-hour_, Nick thought, pulling a ration from his duffel.

Gregory watched the food with hawk-like eyes as he tore the thick gray plastic open. A pile of freeze-dried packets and packages spilled out onto the table.

"Whatcha got in there?"

Nick glanced up. He didn't really want to share. "It's an MRE," he said.

Gregory nodded with short, bird-like jerks of his head. "You have anything with a lot of protein?"

He pushed through the pile with one finger, and isolated the tube of peanut butter. Nick slid it across the table and Gregory snatched it up, reading it, turning it over in his hands.

"Peanut butter. It's been a while."

"Didn't you bring anything?"

Gregory was tearing open the tube with his teeth. "Oh yes," he said around the plastic in his mouth, "oh yes." The top of the tube ripped off and he spat it onto the floor. "I brought food. No peanut butter, though. Most of it's canned fruit."

Nick lifted a freeze-dried square of '_Gourmet Spaghetti Meal'_ and opened it. The food inside was a little like a brick, a dusty, compressed cube of dry noodles and what could vaguely be labeled 'spices.'

He broke it in half and shared with Rob, eating his own like one would eat a cereal bar.

His stomach growled, but his appetite was in the tank, as usual. Nick forced it down.

Gregory was slurping at the tube of peanut butter, the oily dregs appearing around his thin lips as his tongue fished out the stuff inside. "Mmm," he whispered. "What a treat."

Nick dropped his eyes back down to the table, and he grabbed another packet- '_Gourmet Fresh Berry Blend._'

It was actually just like the other one, except sweeter. They both shared the same dry, bland aftertaste, and Nick surmised he was probably just eating some kind of freeze-dried protein base with some cheap artificial flavors and colors mixed inside.

He gathered the rest of the MRE up and placed the little packages into his duffel bag.

Gregory had pulled out a can from his backpack and opened it, drinking the contents as if he were downing a cold beer.

Nick watched him out of the corner of his eye as he clicked the safety on and off his shotgun. The older man finished the can of food, withdrew another, and ate that one, as well.

"Well, well," Gregory said as he stood up, with a stretch. "I am going to turn in, Nickie."

"All right."

The older man pulled down the lock bar of the door and crossed to where the sleeping bags were.

Nick stayed on his seat at the table.

Gregory curled up inside a sleeping bag and lay in a fetal position on the floor. He was silent for so long that Nick thought he'd gone to sleep.

Then he spoke. His voice was soft, calm, and completely unlike how it usually sounded.

"I was a teacher," he spoke.

Nick didn't reply.

Gregory twisted around until he locked eyes with the survivor.

"I was a teacher," he repeated.

"What... what did you teach?"

"English. High school English."

"Yeah?" Nick shifted a little. The older man had a clear look in his eyes, not the usual gleam that seemed to make them pop right through his glasses. He looked almost like a regular person.

He said, "I had a wife."

"So did I."

Gregory looked hard at him, then.

"Did you have to kill her?"

Nick felt that little trill of coldness run through him again. "No," he said.

"I did." The older man curled up tightly into himself, nearly hiding his face in the sleeping bag. "I did. My wife, my daughter, my son. I had to kill them."

Nick didn't dare to speak.

"They were so beautiful, my family. I loved them. God, I loved them."

Gregory pulled his face up sharply from the sleeping bag, making Nick recoil, but the older man just fixed him with his pale eyes and asked, "Do you think He is punishing us?"

"Who?" Nick asked, frowning.

"He must be. God must be punishing us. Who are we to refuse His word?"

Nick shook his head. "There is no God, Gregory."

The older man nodded. His body was trembling. "Yes, I suppose so."

"It's only us, now," the survivor murmured.

"Are we the lucky ones, I wonder?"

Nick lifted his eyes to the dark skylight above them.

"I don't think so."

"We're what's left, huh?"

"Yeah."

"All that's left."

Nick nodded.

Gregory tugged the sleeping bag over his head. "Goodnight, Nick."

He never replied.

As he listened to Gregory's breathing turn into soft snores, he leaned his elbows on the table and stared unseeing at the wall across from him.

It was a lie, really. There wasn't anything left at all.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to High Empress Yggi, who demands satisfaction and is totally awesome. And thanks to Kit, my beta-reader, who now has L4D2! Now you can play Last Man On Earth and wish you had a dog! [I only have the 360 version, so I can't play with my beta-reader.]_

_I hope you're enjoying the story so far. This is the first part of the 'Washington D.C.' arc, which is going to be a bit longer than I thought originally._

_The song Gregory sings is 'Crash Into Me' by Dave Matthews Band._

_Coming up next: The Murderer._

_EDIT 03-02-11: I have never been to Washington, D.C. myself, so I apologize for any inaccuracies regarding subway tunnels, metro stations, neighborhoods and the like. To me, it isn't so much about where the people are- it's about the people themselves. Thanks for reading.)  
_


	9. The Murderer

Nick did not sleep that night. He leaned his aching cheek against his hand and absently pet Rob's head in his lap as he sat, waiting for the sunrise. It took its time, and became a light pink brush of sun that poured in through the skylight above them.

Gregory roused around the time Nick was choking down his breakfast. When the older man stood up and looked at him, the wild gleam had returned to his eyes. His glasses reflected the pale sunlight. Nick averted his own gaze and concentrated on feeding Rob.

"Another day, Nickie," Gregory laughed, slapping his shoulder.

"Yeah."

His face was sore. The skin felt tight and hot over his left cheekbone.

_Well_, he thought, _at least he hit me on the blind side_.

They moved out into the tunnels, flashlights on, feet scraping the gravel underneath them.

Nick shook his head and followed, exhaustion slowing him. Rob was trotting at his feet, nudging him with his nose from time to time as if to say, 'I'm here, I haven't left. I'm here.'

The shotgun felt like it weighed a few more pounds, today. His shoulder- the one that had been gashed open by a Charger- throbbed angrily. How long ago had that been? Nick began counting back days, losing track when he remembered the time on the empty highways, the time in the woods. He wasn't sure how long he'd spent out there. All the days seemed to blur together into the same mesh of red and gray.

He sighed through his nose. Gregory hadn't started singing yet.

Barely fifteen minutes after heading out, the sound of bitter sobbing came echoing down the tunnel.

Nick stopped so fast it was as if he'd been instantly fossilized, panic exploding through his thoughts. His fatigue drained away as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a bathtub.

"Oh, so _sad_," Gregory whispered, just ahead of him. "Poor little girl."

The older man started forward, but when Nick didn't follow, he turned back with a frown.

"Nothing to be scared of. Come on, Nickie."

"No. No. I'm not going any further."

"It's just a cryin' little girl. I'll put a bullet in her brain. Come on."

Nick didn't budge. Neither did Rob. "No."

Gregory tilted his head in that strange curious-bird way, and smiled. "You scared?"

His heart was pounding so fast and hard that he feared the sound might startle the sobbing zombie. He took a step back- all of his bones and muscles felt like they were consumed in hot tar- and shook his head jerkily.

"Scared of a little girl, are ya?" Gregory jibed. "You stay here, then. I'll be right back."

As the older man began down the tunnel, Nick edged back another step. His hands fumbled for the flashlight at the barrel of the shotgun, turned it off. Another step back and he'd run into the tunnel wall. He started, twisting round, realizing halfway that it wasn't going to attack him, and flattened himself against it.

Gregory's flashlight bounced along in the tunnel ahead. The man's voice drifted back to him, the warbling strains of another song:

"_When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, 'What will I be?'"_

Nick slumped down against the wall. Rob pushed his nose under his elbow and he gripped hard to the dog's ruff, breathing thin and rapid through his nose.

"_Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?"_

There was only terror in his mind, racing round and round until he thought it would kill him right there, rupture his heart or hemorrhage his brain, and that would be it.

"_Here's what she said to me..."_

The bridge hung low and dark in his mind. He remembered.

"_Que sera, sera..."_

The sound of a helicopter. A screaming voice. A shriek for help and a shrill cry of rage.

He remembered.

"_Whatever will be, will be..."_

Pain, pain, pain. He'd never felt anything so sharp and consuming before or since.

"_The future's not ours to see."_

Somewhere down in the tunnel, he heard Gregory's song falter.

A gunshot.

The howl of the Witch poured down the tunnel. It may as well have been a physical force. Nick could only think, no, no, no, no, no, _no. _She was killing Gregory _right now_ and then she'd find him, find him, and then, and then-

Rob was licking his arm. He clung tighter, pulling the dog close, hiding his face in the rough fur.

The Witch's scream died. It was quiet.

Minutes seemed like hours, but they passed him by, and Gregory was standing next to him. Blood had splashed up onto his shirt.

"Que sera, sera," he spoke, without melody. "She's all dead now, Nickie. Get up."

Rob licked his face, and the sensation dragged him back to reality. Fingers stiff, he released his grip from the dog's neck.

It took him a while for his heartbeat to return to a normal speed. Nick stood unsteadily, wiping his face, anger growing in his chest. It wasn't anger at Gregory as it had been for the past day- this was a different monster altogether, one that made him furious at himself and his own damned actions.

"You all right?" Gregory asked.

"I'm fucking fine," Nick growled, turning away from the man.

He thought he heard worry in the older man's voice. "You look kinda white, Nickie."

"Just keep walking, please," the survivor ground out. "I'm following."

"Okay. Here we go." Gregory started off. "The Red Line isn't too far now."

Rob nudged him.

Nick swallowed, let out a deep breath, and followed.

* * *

It wasn't much longer before they came upon a station. It wasn't empty. Nick could hear the sounds of zombies coming down the tunnel, their idle moans and indecipherable speech. The adrenaline and fear from earlier had ebbed away, leaving him with a dull, depleted sensation, like a heavy blanket had been thrown over him.

"You gonna freak out on me again?" Gregory asked with a low voice. He slowed to a stop on the edge of the station's light to ready his rifle.

Nick turned the flashlight off on his shotgun and shook his head. "I'm fine."

"Been pretty empty so far, huh? Not here, I guess. They like to come down here."

"Uh-huh," Nick looked down at Rob. The dog's hackles had risen up but he was silent, alert, brown eyes drawn to the forms of the zombies standing in the gray light.

"Haven't seen us yet," Gregory spoke, ambling down the tracks. He set his flashlight carefully on the lip of the station platform, and then slid his backpack to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Nick hissed. The nearest zombie still hadn't caught sight of them.

The older man tore open the zipper and pulled out a white object, about the size of a can of soda, with a strange red top. It took Nick a few moments to process what it was, but by then it was too late for him to do anything about it.

Gregory lifted it, grinning, and depressed the button on the top.

A shrill, piercing sound rent the stagnant air of the subway.

An air horn. A goddamn air horn.

Nick struck out reflexively, knocking the device from Gregory's hand.

The sound stopped, and through the veil of static in his ears he could hear the zombies releasing their angry cries.

"What the _fuck_ was that for?" Nick shouted.

Gregory began laughing. "It's easier this way, you twit!"

Nick raised his shotgun, leveled it toward the station. "How is this _going to be easier_?"

"Ha ha ha! O ye of little faith," the older man screamed with unrestrained fervor, amusement twisting his words into half-giggles. "Are you ready, Nickie?"

And there they came, down the tracks, over and through the unmoving train cars, pouring out of doors and hallways and the tunnels that joined with the station. He kept the wall against his blind side and an ear on the snarling dog behind him.

Gregory began firing, and Nick waited for them to come closer, letting the buckshot rip into them when he was sure he was not going to miss.

Rob hung back. The dog was smart. He knew to stay out of the line of fire.

It didn't take long for Nick's magazine to run dry. The shells in his duffel rattled as he yanked them out one-by-one to reload.

The infected pressed their advantage, moving after him instead of the older man, the way a pack of wolves would attack the weakest of the herd. They were getting smarter, waiting for him to stop shooting before closing in.

Gregory screamed with laughter as Nick had to stumble backwards to avoid being swallowed by the horde. "Nickie, Nickie, you need a better gun!" The words were partially muffled by his gunfire and the zombies' howling.

Nick didn't have the alacrity to come up with a reply. He finished reloading, pulled back the charging handle and began firing again- damn the crowd was close- limbs and heads and everything else flipping through the air as the buckshot tore through them. Within moments he'd spent the whole magazine, but he'd put quite a large dent in the swarm. He went for more shells, trying to keep a mental tally on how many he had left.

Gregory had paused to reload himself, and Nick retreated a few more steps.

It was only a few more moments before the horde was dealt with. Nick stood amongst the shredded bodies, allowing himself a dozen large, calm breaths before turning around to face Gregory.

"Why?"

The older man was irreproachable. "Why what?"

Nick stepped closer, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that warned him against it. "Why'd you go and blow that air horn? You could have gotten us killed!"

"I told you. It's _easier_ that way." Gregory was bristling defensively. His eyes had become wide behind his glasses. "I'm the one in charge here, Nickie. You ought to trust me more."

He felt his jaw go slack. "You're kidding me, right?"

"Nope." Gregory's head tilted and he settled his rifle on his shoulder. "I said I'd lead you out, and that's exactly what I'm doing. You need to be quiet and listen to your elders. It's not my fault that you don't agree with my tactical planning."

"There wasn't anything about what just happened that can be considered _tactical_." It was a real struggle to keep his voice from leaping up into a scream. All he wanted to do was yell and shout at this crazy asshole, but all that would accomplish would be attracting more zombies to them. Or get himself shot. "You could have at least warned me," he resigned, bitterly.

Gregory grinned. His face twisted. "I'll do that, then." He began into the station. "You see how much nicer things can be when we're civil?"

Nick stepped carefully over the bodies, where the other man tromped right over and through them as if they weren't even there. The smell was awful, like a thousand infected wounds. These zombies had been down here a while, festering amongst each other.

Perhaps that was why Rob hadn't gone after them. He hadn't attacked those near Richmond, either. Was it their smell that drove him back?

Gregory climbed up from the tracks and onto the platform. The exits had been sealed with rubble and debris. "This is the transfer station," he explained. "This here, it's going to take you to the Red Line. Then up north and out of the Capital."

"Great," Nick breathed, hauling himself up to the platform.

Rob edged back a little and then jumped up as if he'd been primed on springs.

Damn, that dog can leap, Nick thought, reaching out a hand to pet him. Rob's tail wagged.

"Hmm, yeah," Gregory was muttering to himself. He was a bit ahead, staring at one of the large plastic subway maps on the wall. "This is definitely the station."

Nick frowned. It was a map, but it was burnt to a crisp. He could see a few colored lines, but not much behind the maimed plastic. He chewed his tongue and ventured, "How can you even read that?"

The older man tapped his temple. "I'm reading it _here_," he stated. "Memorization is good for your brain."

Nick approached with care. When he didn't speak, Gregory continued.

"It'll keep you on your toes. You should try it sometime."

"I guess."

"How about this. What's four multiplied by four?"

Nick sighed. "Sixteen."

"Multiply that by four."

"Uh." He wasn't going to lie. "I gotta think about it."

Gregory turned toward him. "If you'd memorized it, you wouldn't have to."

"Sixty," Nick answered. "Sixty-four."

"Sixty-four times four is what?"

"I don't have time for this," Nick bit out. "Can't we just keep going?"

"Two-hundred fifty-six," Gregory said. "Times that by four. One-thousand, twenty-four. Four-thousand ninety-six. Sixteen-thousand, three-hundred eighty-four."

Nick shook his head. "What possible use could that have for me, Gregory?"

The older man shrugged. "When you think about numbers... it's easier to stop thinking about _that_." He motioned to the dead bodies on the tracks. "On _this._" He tapped the stock of his rifle.

Nick blinked. That could have very well been one of the sanest things he'd ever heard the man say. "Is that why you sing so much?" he asked, and was immediately sorry he'd done so. He imagined Gregory would lash out, get angry, maybe even shoot him, but he didn't.

"Nah," the older man said, grinning. "I just like to sing." He turned toward the tunnels. "Off we go, Nickie. Our red carpet awaits us."

* * *

They went on, delving back into the darkness.

Nick was hanging back, keeping his flashlight trained on Gregory's feet. Exhaustion tugged at his senses. Waiting until he got out of the subway to sleep wasn't going to work. His body wasn't going to let him go much further. Even now, with every other step he was kicking rocks, or tripping up on the subway rail.

Gregory noticed this and spoke up.

"You wanna take a breather?"

Nick shook his head, sluggishly recalled that Gregory would not be able to see it, and spoke a rough, "No."

"You sure?"

Those two parts of his mind were warring with each other again. One told him not to do it, that Gregory was going to murder him in his sleep. The other just told him to lie down, just for a while, just until he could see straight again.

Nick cleared his throat. "All right. Let's stop. For a bit."

Gregory chuckled. "I could tell you were wearin' down. I could tell. There's a maintenance hub somewhere around here. We'll stop there for the night."

"Sounds good." He couldn't believe how appealing the thought of getting sleep- even a few hours- had become. Nick wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd slept. It was hard to tell exactly how long he'd been down here; there were no clocks, no daylight moving overhead to prove that time was really passing. All of it was blurring together, and that worried him.

Presently, Gregory found the maintenance room- it was nearly identical to the last, except with less supplies and no overhead window. They locked the door behind them as they entered, the older man flitting about in the dark for a minute before locating an old lamp.

Nick went to the nearest wall and slid down it without hesitation, setting his things next to him. Rob came around and flopped to the ground at his side with a huff. With a sigh, the survivor shut his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. He may as well have been lying out on a plush feather mattress. In his lap he rested the shotgun, keeping the barrel pointed away from his dog and his finger draped over the trigger guard.

Gregory was making some kind of noise on the other side of the room. Nick cracked his good eye open to look, and saw him bent down over the backpack, pawing through it frantically.

"What's the problem?" he asked, making no effort to mask the irritation coming through his words.

"I lost something," the older man said without looking at him.

"What did you lose?"

"I had- I had a book here. In this bag. Have you seen it?"

Nick sighed. "I haven't."

Gregory sat down cross-legged, turning the backpack upside down. Out spilled a few cans of food, magazines for his rifle, another flashlight. Some small objects that Nick struggled to identify: a set of nail clippers, a few bottle caps, a small electronic device with a cord wrapped around it- an MP3 player.

"It's not here," Gregory said, anxiety creeping into his voice. "My book's not here."

Nick pulled his duffel bag over to him and opened it. Down at the bottom was the novel he'd found a long while back, on the highway, when he'd first found Rob. There was a picture of a pair of hands holding an apple. _Twilight,_ the book was titled.

"Here. You can have this one," Nick said, offering the worn paperback out.

Gregory scooted over and took it. "I haven't read this one." He turned it over in his hands and began to read the back cover. "Okay, I'll take it. Looks like it might be all right."

"I haven't read it."

"I'll let you know if it's good."

Gregory settled down across from him, close to the lamp. Soon, the only noises in the room were soft breathing and the turning of pages.

Nick closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to take him.

* * *

"Wakey, wakey. Eggs and bacey!"

He came languorously out of a thick swirl of deep sleep with his face in Rob's fur and an ache in his back. Somehow he'd gotten himself into a half-supine position using the dog as a pillow. He straightened, feeling his spine popping.

"What time is it?" he slurred.

Gregory was standing in front of him, rifle in one hand and the book in the other.

"Been about eight hours, now."

Nick groaned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I didn't need eight hours," he said.

"You should have specified."

"I _did _specify."

"I never got a timetable."

"For a _bit_, I said. Not eight goddamn hours."

Gregory was smiling. He held out the book.

"I finished it. It was pretty good."

Nick shook his head. "You keep it. I'm not a big fan of romance novels." He eased himself to his feet, ignoring the protest in his joints. _God dammit_, he thought. _I'm thirty-five, not sixty-five_. For a moment he considered taking some hydrocodone, but instead settled for an outdated bottle of aspirin that he'd found somewhere in North Carolina.

The pills were bitter, and he chewed on a bland MRE to try and get the taste off his tongue. He didn't even bother to see what it was he was eating. Everything was starting to taste the same.

Rob didn't care. Nick was starting to think he was brain-damaged, and thought all food tasted like prime rib.

Gregory was starting off into the tunnels again. He followed, and was surprised to feel a pleasant buzz of energy beneath all the aching in his body.

They walked for a long time. Gregory didn't pause as often as he had before, which made Nick grateful. Rob never wandered off, and they found more dead zombies than live ones. Besides having to walk with insanity, it was actually a rather easy trek.

Maybe taking the subway _had_ been a good idea.

* * *

Or, perhaps not.

They came upon another station with skylights bleeding pink-red light. Was it dusk or dawn?

There was still a train here, waiting for that last ride, a sleeping behemoth on the tracks. Gregory climbed right inside, beckoning Nick with a wave of his hand.

"This is it," he spoke. "This is the last station."

For the first time in a while, Nick felt a tiny, but warm, feeling of hope. God, he was really going to make it out of here. Alive- and, most importantly, away from Gregory.

His hope came crashing down, disintegrating into terror, when he entered the train.

The smell of decay came up into his face like a cloud of smoke, choking him. His eye caught sight of the bodies inside the train car, piled up against the benches. Some of them in a seated position. A lot of them tiny and young, and all of them rotting.

Nick turned away, gagging.

"_Jesus_. What the _fuck _is this?"

Gregory was completely unfazed, or at least he sounded like it. "Just bodies, Nickie. You've seen plenty of bodies, haven't you?"

He shook his head. "These are..." he couldn't stomach the words. Children. They were children.

_Say, hey, Daisy Mae..._

Nick kept his back turned even though his instincts were telling him not to, staring down the blackened tunnel, trying to erase what he'd just seen from his mind. Above all, he was trying not to vomit.

Rob hadn't come up after him. He stared at his owner, posture low and timid.

"Oh, they won't bite you," Gregory was speaking again. "Just come on through, now."

"How can you..." Nick shook his head. He'd seen plenty of dead kids. Why were these bothering him so much? Was it because there were so many? Why were they all...

He was trembling and he couldn't figure out _why._

"Time's a-wastin'," Gregory pressed.

"What happened here?" Nick asked, not turning to look, knowing he'd see those pale, dead eyes amongst the little bodies. "Why are there so... so many of them?"

The older man was quiet for a few moments. "Someone took care of them," he whispered.

Nick felt cold, so cold. "Was it you?" The words came out the way bile would.

Gregory was stepping down the train car toward him.

"Did you do this, Gregory? _Did you do this to them?_"

The older man was at his shoulder now. Nick didn't want to look, but he did.

Those eyes behind the reflective glass were so hollow, so empty; it was as if he were looking into a deep void of the earth.

"Yes," Gregory said.

Nick couldn't look away. He felt ensnared, like a fatal drug had just been given to him, and nothing in the world would be able to stop it from consuming his life.

"Someone had to do it," the older man said, visage unblinking. "It was me. My job. My choice."

The chill that had come upon him turned ardent and searing white. He struck out with a hard, open-handed slap, knocking Gregory backwards with a stunned yelp. When the man reached for his rifle, Nick bludgeoned him with the stock of the shotgun.

Gregory tumbled back onto one of the seats, still trying for the gun, but Nick struck him again, and again, ripping the weapon from his hands and throwing it aside.

Then he raised his shotgun, leveled it at Gregory's chest.

"Nickie, Nickie-"

"I don't want to hear it."

Gregory's breaths came with hitching sobs. "Please, I don't want to die. Nickie, please."

"You don't want-" Nick came closer, tapping him with the cool muzzle of the shotgun. "You don't _want to die?_ What about _them_?" He motioned with his head to the bodies. "What about those children? You think I can't see they aren't _infected?_"

"I was doing my job. I was helping them. I had to. I had to!" He was wailing, moving his hands up in an attempt to either protect his face or show he meant no harm.

It wouldn't help him. Nick had seen enough.

"Just close your eyes and sing, Gregory. It'll be over in a second."

"Nickie," he was blubbering. "Nickie. Please. Please. I helped you. I led you through the subway. I haven't gone astray. Please, please, _please_ don't."

Nick clicked back the safety on the shotgun.

"Thanks for leading me out," he ground out, swallowing bile, "and I appreciate you not killing me."

Gregory's whole body was heaving with sobs, and his eyes held raw terror. "I'm sorry," he cried.

Nick lifted the shotgun and fired.

Blood splashed hot against his face. The shotgun's roar drowned out whatever screams Gregory could have made. His body jerked backwards, face gone, skull gone, brains gone. Most of it painted over the train window. The body shuddered and twitched before slipping off of the seat and onto the floor.

Silence.

Nick stepped backwards. Smoke drifted up from the barrel of the shotgun.

"See you, Gregory," he muttered, and turned to where Rob was waiting, on the tracks of the tunnel.

"Come on. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Gregory's rifle was still lying on the floor of the car. Nick took that and the flashlight, and left everything else. It felt like he was suffocating. He had to get out of the subway.

He kept his gaze straight ahead as he hurried down the interior of the train car. For the first- and likely last- time, he was glad of his impaired vision. There was less for him to see.

The rush to the end of the train may as well have been a few miles. Rob was sticking close to him, ears held back against his skull fearfully. The smell was choking him as well as two hands around his throat could.

They reached the station. The stairs leading up to the surface were clear and alluring, and Nick took them two at a time, feeling as if all the air in the subway had been sucked out and replaced with something toxic.

Nick came out of the subway, stepping into the dusky street-side. Sweat and something else stung his eyes; when he went to wipe it off, his hand came away red. He took a deep breath of the fresh air-

_Say, hey, Daisy Mae._

-Then twisted sharply to his left, dropped to all fours, and vomited on the curb. Shaking, he stared at the tiny bit of foamy bile- all he'd been able to bring up- and dry-heaved.

Rob sidled close to him, whining.

"I'm all right," he groaned, shifting about until he was sitting down. Dull exhaustion had come back with a vengeance, tearing roughly at the edges of his thoughts. His chest hurt.

_Say, hey, Daisy Mae._

Nick wiped at his eyes, scrubbed the blood from his face and hands with the edges of his jacket. His stomach was still spasming; he gagged once and swallowed.

"Christ," he whispered. Now, out in the clear sunset light and fresh air, the only thing he could think of were those bodies in the train, and the way Gregory had apologized in the second before he'd died. Nick shut his eyes but that only made the image clearer, somehow. "Jesus Christ."

The _tap-tap-tap-tap_ of faraway gunfire stoked him back to life.

Nick climbed to his feet, shaking his head. He didn't have time for this.

Maine, that's where they are. Maine.

He began through the thinning buildings.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my name-fiend and musical score specialist, and thanks to Kit, my beta-reader and Keeper of the Snacks. And thank you to everyone who has left a review for my little story. I know it's nothing romantic or humorous, there's no friendly Infected or shipping, but I've worked hard on it, and I'm grateful that it's being read. Thanks.  
_

_Coming up next: The Patient. In which Nick says hello to the military.)  
_


	10. The Patient

It turned out to be nearing dusk when Nick left the subway. There were clouds on the horizon, and a chill wind was kicking up that seemed to blow right through him. He concentrated on the feeling of his body shivering, of the way the shotgun felt frozen to his hands, anything to stop the bile from rising up in his throat again. God, he hated this.

But there was no other choice. He could either keep moving, or die.

Hell if he was going to choose the latter.

He could still hear guns, but they seemed to be getting quieter. That was good. He was moving away from possible military contact. Getting shot would _really _put a finishing glare on his already terrible day.

It was starting to get dark out when Nick came round a corner and stepped straight into a war zone.

Gunfire erupted in the building across from him, and he moved. There was a school bus, dead on the side of the road; he shielded himself behind it, readying his shotgun. The sounds quieted.

Had he been fired at? He hadn't been shot; neither had the dog, who stuck with him as if tied by an invisible rope. Nick glanced about, but he couldn't see anything but the street he'd just come down.

The gunfire exploded again, sounding like it was right on top of him, making him duck his head reflexively. He could make out voices, but he couldn't tell if they were human or not. Garbled. Was it a radio?

Nick hunkered down low, peering underneath the bus. The building across the street was a restaurant; the neon sign still flickered with intermittent electricity. The windows were boarded up with bodies in piles on the sidewalk outside.

They looked like zombies. Were there other survivors trying to hole up here?

_Not much of a safe house_, he thought.

The gunshots did not erupt for a long while. Nick stepped carefully, bringing himself round the tail end of the bus. The garbled noises came again; definitely that of a radio. He couldn't distinguish the words, but his curiosity was piqued. Nick crept out into the street, holding the shotgun firmly, his finger taut on the trigger.

"_Dead Roosevelt, this is Wandering Washington. What is your position? Over."_

It was coming from the bodies piled before the restaurant. He bent down and prodded through them with the gun as the radio continued on:

"_Washington, this is Roosevelt. We are in section two-two-niner. Kilo India confirmed. Over."_

Nick found the radio, still attached to the belt of a soldier in gray-green fatigues. He shoved the stiff corpses of the zombies away and dug through the pockets. There was nothing, not even a wallet. Nick sank back on his haunches, frowning. Something felt odd about this.

_"Roosevelt, we are hearing reports of Tango Mike in area two-five-niner. Confirm or deny. Over."_

The soldier, he came to realize, was uninfected. His skin was pale, but it was the color of a dead man, not a dead zombie. However, there were no classic signs of being beaten or bitten to death. Was he, too, a carrier?

Nick furrowed his brows. The military wouldn't have kept a carrier around for fighting. This man would have been executed, or- as Nick had been- used as a testing ground for a cure or vaccine.

"_Negative, Washington. Wait out. Over."_

Rob was shoving his nose under his arm.

"_I copy you, Roosevelt. Out."_

Nick leaned closer, pulling the radio from the man's belt. When he did, he saw a trio of bullet holes on the soldier's back.

Well. From this, he could deduct a few things. Unless the zombies had learned how to use guns, there were other survivors out here, like him. So, either a desperate survivor had killed the soldier for his things, or it had been self-defense.

He would bet a hundred dollars that the military had stopped trying to synthesize a vaccine, and were now just trying to stay alive themselves, killing anything and everything that wasn't an uninfected human being. These must be the ones that hadn't gotten to those cruise ships, he thought, the ones who hadn't pulled out of the mainland.

_Crack-crack-crack-crack-_ the gunfire barked sudden and close, and Nick retreated back to the bus.

If whoever was firing those guns were the military, he needed to know where they were before he could move on. He wasn't sure if he could take a few soldiers in a fight, and he wasn't willing to risk getting Rob shot, either.

Voices. He could hear people calling out, definitely human, and very near.

Nick looked around for a place to hunker down, and decided on the bus. He pried open the swinging door and stole down the aisle, crouching down behind one of the back seats with Rob. They kept low and still.

Two figures came jogging down the street. They were dressed in military garb, respirators covering their faces and black assault rifles in their hands.

Rob heard them and began huffing in warning; Nick grabbed the dog's muzzle to quiet him.

"No, Rob," he commanded with a hiss. "No."

The pair were coming closer, holding a conversation in low tones that Nick could only hear fragments of. He shrank against the dog, afraid to try and get a look. The sound of their heavy boots hitting the concrete was just outside. Mere inches of steel separated him from them.

"...Tango Mike?"

"They're around here somewhere. Hiding out in this section."

Nick kept one hand firm around Rob's mouth and the other on the shotgun. The dog's eyes were flicking back and forth, seeking out the strange voices.

"Reagan was in this section... before his radio went dead."

"I told you," the second voice was rising steadily, "it's those damn carriers. I told you, they were shooting the personnel!"

"Reagan, this is Roosevelt," said the first, and Nick figured he was speaking into the radio.

The voices outside fell.

"Did you hear that?"

"It's his radio. Over there."

Good, Nick thought. Get nice and distracted. He straightened up a few inches and could see them moving toward the restaurant, where the radio was still attached to the soldier's belt. Their backs were to him.

He set his shotgun down and leaned forward, reaching for the emergency exit door in the rear of the bus.

The soldiers were talking again, the only words detectable being 'Tango Mike,' whatever that meant.

Nick got his hand around the door handle and tugged. It held firm. He released his hand from Rob's muzzle so he could grab the handle with both, and gave it a strong yank.

It came down suddenly, with a resounding _clang_, almost spilling Nick to the floor.

So much for sneaking away.

He was already on his feet, grabbing up the shotgun, scrambling for the front end of the bus. The soldiers were speaking in alarmed voices, but he didn't wait to hear what they were saying.

Nick came out into the street and started running, the rifle slapping against his sore shoulder.

The soldiers must have seen them, because they started shouting.

"Hey! Hey, you! Stop!"

He ignored them completely, sprinting for the street intersection ahead of him, Rob right at his side.

Then came the gunshots.

Terror rushed through his body, cold and numbing. He'd never actually been _shot at_ before, with the men behind the guns _aiming_ to end his life. A buzz passed by his left ear and he bit back a scream, thinking that if he'd only been two inches to the other side _he would be dead right now._

Nick reached the end of the road and dashed for the building on the corner.

He was close, so _goddamn_ close, when a biting pain pierced into his right leg.

It was only by some twisted miracle that he didn't instantly collapse. He got around the side of the building, the shotgun tumbling from his grip as he fumbled at the bricks to keep himself upright. The feeling of hot blood running freely down his leg made his stomach turn to ice.

_Move_, his mind screamed. _Jesus fucking Christ, _move!

Nick left the shotgun where it was and pushed himself forward, down the wall, hearing the soldiers calling out behind him.

He set his right leg down and it crumpled, pitching him to the sidewalk. The duffel and rifle thunked to the ground. It felt like someone had doused him in gasoline and thrown a match on the whole mess. He couldn't breathe from the pain, just force out a strangled, high-pitched sound, like a wild animal.

Nick was distantly aware that he was still trying to flee, pushing himself along with the good leg and one arm. Rob was next to him, pushing his cool nose into the back of his neck, whimpering loudly into his ear.

Nick pushed at the dog's muzzle, sobbing. "Run," he cried. "Please, just run!"

He did not. Rob kept right where he was, where he'd been and where he would always be: at his side.

The voices came again. Nick reached a utility pole, grabbing at it with his hands to pull himself up. He glimpsed his leg; it was bleeding, badly, and he'd left a big red streak all down the sidewalk. The rifle lay a few feet away. He grabbed the strap and pulled it toward himself.

"Come on," he yelled, finding he had more strength in his voice than he had in his body. "You want a fucking piece? _Fuck you!_" His words were bold, but the agony racing up his leg put a pitiful crack into his voice.

He heard gunfire again and he felt his whole body tense up, every muscle primed for the sting of a new kind of pain. The soldiers hadn't appeared around the corner yet. What were they shooting at?

Above, he thought, lifting his eyes, but there was nothing. He jerked the rifle into his lap.

Rob was whining next to him. He ignored it.

The voices of the soldiers came again. They were on their way.

"Come on, _come on..._"

Nick tightened his grip on the gun to quell his trembling fingers, clicking back the lever action with clumsy, unlearned movements.

He heard the sound of a rifle- a high-caliber rifle, like the one he'd owned before. That was strange. Hadn't the soldiers had assault rifles? This sounded completely different. A sniper rifle.

Had the military set up a shooter to take care of him?

The sound of the sniper came again, each blast coming as if meticulously timed, like a metronome. Three times it fired, and then, it was quiet.

A breeze swept over the street. His breaths came fast and shallow. Shock. Was he already going into shock? That wasn't right. He glanced down at the trail of blood he'd left. Had he lost that much already? His vision blurred and he was trying his hardest to focus, but for some reason, his mind kept centering on something else, like the color of that Cajun boat _Lagniappe_ or what street he used to live on.

Footsteps. Just around the corner. He lifted the rifle, and the barrel was trembling.

"Fucking asshole," he spat, "come on!"

Someone came around the building and Nick pulled the trigger. His shot went wide, hitting the sidewalk instead of the person, who stopped, standing straight and still with his arms in the air.

Confusion raced through him. It wasn't a soldier. It was a _teenager,_ a _kid_, with a face smudged with dirt and brown hair slick with sweat. Where the hell had the soldiers gone?

"Don't shoot," the boy said. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Nick lifted the gun higher, struggling to aim with his only eye. "Who are you?"

Rob was growling.

"I'm not a soldier," the boy began, speaking quickly. "I'm a survivor. I'm a survivor. I've been following you a while now. Don't shoot, okay?"

The boy stepped forward and Rob let out a low, warning snarl, standing over Nick's injured leg.

"I want to help you. Let me help you."

The rifle dropped, but only because he couldn't hold it anymore; the barrel tapped against the concrete between his legs. He let out a shuddering half-sob, unable to do much else but stare at the blood pooling underneath him.

"They shot you, didn't they? Let me..." The boy took another step.

So did Rob.

"Could you... could you stop your dog, please?"

Nick swallowed his nausea. "Rob," he groaned. "No."

The dog's growling halted, and the kid crossed the rest of the distance, keeping a worried eye on the animal.

"Okay, those soldiers are taken care of, but they're gonna send someone out here to investigate why their radios died," the boy was speaking, bending down to take a look at the wound. "We got a safe house a few blocks away. Can you walk?"

Nick's head was buzzing. "I don't know," he said. He felt like he was going to puke.

"They got you pretty good. Let's see here," the boy was pulling something from his shoulder; a small backpack that Nick hadn't even noticed. He opened it and pulled out a first aid kit. "Not gonna do a whole lot," he spoke apologetically, "just enough to control the bleeding. Can't wait here long."

Without reluctance, the boy drew a length of gauze over the wound and tied it down with strong, efficient motions.

Nick couldn't help it. The pain ricocheted through him, and he screamed.

"You're okay," he heard beneath the white haze that had overcome his whole mind. A hand was gripping his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts. I'm sorry."

It was a surprise to Nick that he didn't pass out, but instead crept back to cognizance. Rob was nosing his cheek, as if that alone could get him up and moving.

The howling pain faded by degrees. He concentrated on the cold nose on his cheek, blinking hard. _Focus_, he told himself. _Focus, or you are going to die_.

The kid was staring down at him, empathy on his stained face. "Hey, big guy. Stay with me. I'm not gonna leave you laying here." He went about picking up the dropped duffel bag, the shotgun.

"I've never been shot before," Nick mumbled, unsure whether his words were coming out correctly or not.

"First time's always the worst. Give me your hand."

Effortlessly, the kid pulled him to his feet.

"It's okay. I'm gonna help you," he was saying, looping an arm over his shoulders. Nick bristled on instinct, recoiling at the boy's closeness, but the kid was strong, and only pulled him tighter. He was panicked to find that there was little fight left in him, and he slumped against the body holding him up. "You're all right. Come on, mister."

Nick couldn't figure it out. Why was this kid helping him? He didn't do anything to deserve it.

Rob circled anxiously around their feet as they moved down the sidewalk.

"Don't pass out, okay?"

"I'm trying not to," Nick breathed. His mind was swimming.

"My name's Terrence. Terry," the kid said. "What's your name, mister?"

"I'm..." he fought to swallow properly; it felt like his whole body was malfunctioning. "I'm dizzy," his brain finished for him.

"That's okay, Mr. Dizzy," Terrence chuckled dryly. "It's just the gunshot. You're gonna be fine."

"You're sure about that?"

"I've seen worse," the boy said, pausing to search his face. "And it looks like you have, too."

Nick scoffed, or at least tried to, but it came out as a sick, wet noise. "I guess... you have a point." He looked up and saw empty buildings. Bodies of zombies lay all over the road. Cars choked off every street. "Why's it so empty?" he asked.

"Well, we've been here a while," Terrence replied, and Nick could hear the smile in his voice. "Gotta keep the lawn mowed, you know?"

"What?"

"Just a saying."

"I don't understand."

"Well, you know, how you'd have to mow a-"

Nick coughed. "No... no, I mean... why? Why are you doing this for me?"

Terrence halted for a moment to shift his grip on him. "Well, why not?"

"Because I..." his mind was off in New Orleans, "I'm a bad man."

"You've done nothing to prove that to me, mister."

The arm around his shoulders tightened, and the boy stopped.

"Here, look. We made it."

Nick lifted his head to see, through blurred vision, a steel safe house door. "That was fast," he mumbled.

"I had you distracted," Terrence said, grinning as he shoved the door open.

Warm air blasted his face. He had forgotten how cold it was outside.

The kid set him into a chair that looked like what he'd see in a hospital waiting room. Comfortable. Nick realized the rifle was still hanging loosely from his hand and he let it drop to the floor. Rob was right next to him, as close as he could get. His whines had started up again.

He heard the sound of the door lock being forced into place, and an unfamiliar voice.

"That's him?" It sounded like a girl.

"Yeah. Military tagged him. Good shot, Izzy."

He was going to pass out. Spots danced in front of his vision, and he couldn't stop staring at the checkerboard black-and-white floor.

"Stay awake," came Terrence's sudden, sharp voice. "Or you might not wake up again."

"Tired," Nick slurred.

"I know." The boy was bending down in front of him. "Hey. Look at me."

He lifted his eyes slowly.

"You're going to be fine."

His focus was slipping irrevocably away. He couldn't bring it back anymore. What color had Rochelle's shirt been?

"Izzy, get the medical kit-"

Darkness.

For a while, he slipped in and out of something that was a bit like sleep, opaque and thick. He thought he could hear a conversation, somewhere above him. They were talking about _infection_ and _bullets._ Perhaps the old zombie flu had gotten the best of him, and he'd become one of _them_. No, that was impossible. He was a _carrier._ Carriers didn't turn into zombies. Carriers were _immune._

No. Not immune, the analytical part of his mind was telling him. You _are_ infected. You already _are_ a zombie. You just aren't foaming at the mouth. You're _aware._

He remembered having it explained to him. How the doctor's soft voice had spoken a bunch of medical terms he wasn't familiar with, and that he couldn't remember anymore. The doctor had called him _Nicholas, _had stitched him back up when no-one else dared touch him, for fear of catching the infection. He supposed that doctor had been the only reason he was still walking around.

What had his name been?

He could hear speech again, closer, clearer.

"_I wonder... how he got so far in here, without the military getting him_."

"_Maybe he came in from the north_."

"_Not with that blockade. There's no way."_

They were talking about him. One voice he knew, the kid- Terrence, wasn't it?- and another. Younger. Either an older girl or an adolescent boy.

"_Good thing we have Sean around, or he wouldn't have made it._"

There was movement on his left side, and he was trying to turn his head to see, but his eyes didn't want to work. Even that slight movement was enough to remind him that his leg was burning, and the fire was crawling up the rest of him. He heard someone crying. Was it himself?

"_Don't worry, mister. This is gonna help you._"

A wave of fear swept through him, thinking they were going to shoot him, put him out of his misery.

There was a prick at the crook of his elbow, and everything faded away- the pain first, ebbing back like a tide. Then went everything else.

* * *

The strange veil of unconsciousness came off of him, all at once. He was lying on his back on something cold and hard, and there were fluorescent lights above him. Something warm and wet was on his cheek.

Nick turned his head to look and saw a pile of brown fur.

Rob. The dog was stretched out beside him, licking at his face.

"Hey, buddy," Nick breathed. He felt fuzzy, as if his head had been filled with cotton. Anxiety had already settled into his thoughts. Where _was_ he? He remembered leaving the subway, and then running away from a pair of soldiers with assault rifles.

Rob was laying his head on his chest. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick could see his tail wagging.

"Off," he grunted, pushing himself up onto his elbows.

He looked around. They were in a well-lit room, filled with cupboards and counters. On them, he could see vials and books, papers and unfamiliar machinery. It looked like the storage room of a doctor's office.

Nick pushed himself up until he was sitting. His hands felt numb, and he had to look down at them to make sure they were still there. God, was he _high?_

Something white caught his attention- it was his right leg, which was bandaged from his knee to his ankle.

Oh, yeah. _Now_ he remembered. The military had shot him, and he'd fallen down and cried like a baby while someone else had taken care of them. Terrence- that had been the kid's name. The kid who'd picked him up and dragged him back to... well, _here_, he could only assume.

Nick stared at his leg. At least it was still there.

At least he hadn't _died_.

A sound made him lift his head. They were footsteps, sounding just outside the door. Nick squinted. His mind was humming pleasantly.

The door opened, and he saw the kid that had helped him. Terrence. His right eye was black- had that been there before?- but there was a grin on his pimpled, oily face.

Rob got up and went to greet him, tail wagging. That was a good sign.

"Morning," Terrence said, reaching down to pet the dog. "How do you feel?"

"Where am I?" That was the most important thing to know right now, he thought.

"You're in Chillum. A suburb of Washington, D.C."

Nick blinked dazedly.

"It's a bit north of the Capital," Terrence explained, moving to a cross-legged position in front of him. His voice cracked with hormones. "I was following you for a while, out there. You _really_ need to steer clear of the military, man. You almost lost your leg."

He stared at the bandages. Unanswered questions clamored for supremacy in his mind. Nick raised his eyes and stared at the kid, who gazed coolly back at him. "Who are you?" he asked, then, "why were those soldiers in the city?" His voice was regaining its strength and was now building momentum. "What's going on out here? Why did they-"

"Hey, hey, hey. One at a time, mister. I can't keep all that straight," the boy said, chuckling. "I'll tell you again, my name is Terrence. Terry, if you want." He stared up at the ceiling. "The military is stationed here in the Capital. Personally, I think they're just trying to clear the area so they can start rebuilding. Of course, I'm sure you know we carriers are high priority targets."

Nick frowned. "So they just shoot us, is that it?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Think about it. The personnel, they aren't immune. Letting us get close is just as bad as letting any old zombie get in. Except we're a bit smarter." He grinned widely at his own joke. "I'm almost positive that they're allowed to shoot anything they find. Apparently their last target was _you._" Terrence shifted a little. "Who _are_ you, anyway? I've never seen you around. You a local?"

Nick sagged. Just what he needed- more people wanting to get to know him better. That had worked _so well_ with Gregory. "I'm Nick." He started with the bare essentials. "The dog- that's Rob. I came through the subway in Arlington."

The boy's eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. "You took the _Metro_?"

"Ah, yeah."

Terrence moved a little closer as if he were about to divulge a terrible secret. "Did you see the old man down there? The man who lives in the tunnels?"

Nick felt a chill running down into his gut. "Yes," he said.

"You're lucky to be alive. That man- he pretty much _runs_ the Metro, nowadays. We keep signs up to try and keep people away, but most of 'em don't listen. He's dangerous."

"Well, not anymore."

Surprise fell onto the kid's face. "What do you mean? Is he dead?"

Nick inclined his head slowly. "I killed him."

Awe and appreciation had entered Terrence's features now. His face was easily readable, open. Honest. Nick's first instinct was to take advantage of that, but he knew he wouldn't. Who else would have come to help him on that sidewalk?

"Wow, mister. You're something else." Terrence was getting to his feet. Rob trotted around his legs, wiggling with a youthful excitement. The boy scratched his ears. "What a good dog, Rob."

Nick rubbed his eyes, and had to wait a while for his vision to return to normal. He _was_ high. And not on the lightheaded buzz of hydrocodone, either. "What did you give me?" he asked.

"Oh, morphine."

"Where the hell did you get _morphine?_"

Terrence smiled. He always seemed to be smiling. "This is a pharmacy. Let me know if you feel queasy. It can really mess your stomach up." A thought passed over his face. "Do you need anything, Mr. Nick?"

"Yeah. A bathroom."

The boy laughed.

* * *

After he'd slept a few more hours, Terrence brought him into what looked like an employee lounge. There was a couch, and a table. A widescreen television sat in one corner. Shelves lined the wall, filled with guns and ammunition.

It was actually quite impressive. Nick eased himself down onto the couch, stretching his leg. It stung like hell. The morphine was starting to wear off, he thought, wondering how bad the damage was. At least he was sure that the bullet hadn't destroyed the bone.

"_Sean!_" Terrence yelled, sudden and loud.

Nick jumped, but before he could open his mouth to complain, another kid had entered the room. This one was short- a lot shorter than Terrence- with a twisted mop of black hair, and round cheeks. He looked even younger than the other boy.

"Whoa, hey! He's walking around?"

"Yeah. Uh, Mr. Nick, this is Sean. He's our... well, he's kinda the medic around here. He's the one that pulled the bullet out of your leg."

Sean held up his hand, making a three-inch spread between his thumb and forefinger. "It was _this big_," he said.

Nick raised an eyebrow. "What, really?"

"No," Sean said, and smirked. "About the size of the end of my pinky. It was under your tibia."

"My what?"

"This one. This bone," the boy tapped the top of his shin. "A few more inches, and it would have been _inside_ of it. Wouldn't have been able to help you then."

Nick felt a frown come over his face. Once again, he was wondering why anyone would even _want to_ help him. They hadn't had a chance to get to know him yet.

Well, they'd figure it out soon enough. Probably after the morphine wore off.

Sean sat down beside him. His eyes were big and brown, sharp with intelligence. "It is really amazing that you're up and moving, you know? I don't really have a high success rate."

"Why'd you have to go say that, Sean?" Terrence cried. "Way to go!"

Nick glanced between the two of them as they started to argue. This was obviously a common occurrence. He leaned back on the couch, wondering how long it had been since he'd sat like this.

There was movement to his right, and when he turned to look he saw the third of this group, who was short and scrawny, with a shock of red hair and pale, bruised eyes. God, he looked like he was ten years old. Nick stared at him.

"Hi," the kid- the child- squeaked.

"Hey."

He crept over to him. "I like your dog." His voice was extremely soft, and low, as if his voice would only go up to a limited volume.

Rob came over and licked the kid's hands.

Sean and Terrence, argument pausing, looked over.

"Hey, Izzy. That's Nick and Rob. Mr. Nick, that's Isaac. He's the one that stopped those personnel from finishing you off outside."

Nick looked at the little boy. He barely seemed big enough to lift a pistol.

"How _old _are you guys?"

Terrence spoke first. "I'm sixteen. Sean's only a year younger than me."

Isaac looked him right in the eye and said, "I'm twelve."

Nick's stomach dropped. Twelve years old. A twelve year old kid was out here, fighting against zombies twice his size, and surviving. They were even fighting the _military,_ trained personnel with years of combat experience, and they were _winning._

He wouldn't have believed it if the kid weren't standing in front of him now.

Half his age, and they had saved his life.

"Are you all that's out here? Where are all the..."

"Adults?" Terrence finished. "Well. My mom and dad didn't make it. Neither did Sean's. Izzy's, well... she might still be around."

Isaac's face lifted a bit. "That's why we're still here," he spoke quietly. "We stayed behind after the evacuation. I thought we would find my mom, and..."

"Now the military's got us trapped in this suburb," Sean finished.

"We were..." Terrence crossed his arms and shook his head. His smile was gone. "We were sort of hoping you'd help us out, mister. We have a bit of a problem, ourselves."

Nick sighed.

Always a catch.

* * *

_(A/N: For those of you still reading, I apologize for the delay. Life has been pretty busy for me lately, but hopefully now I'll be back on schedule._

_Thanks to Yggi, my Level 22 Adventurer, and to Kit, my beta reader- we're a crew of drunken pilots, we're the only airship pirates!_

_Coming up next: The Ally. In which Nick realizes that friends can be more useful than enemies.)  
_


	11. The Ally

"It's the military. They've got a blockade set up on the way out of the city. Nobody gets in or out," Terrence explained, pulling up a plastic chair. He sat on it backwards and rested his arms on the top. "We've been held down here for a month now. It won't be long until they find this place."

Nick scratched the back of his neck. "I'm not sure what you want me to do."

The boys looked amongst each other, and then Isaac spoke up.

"We need to get out of D.C., but we can't get past them."

Nick rubbed his eyes. "Look, kid. I appreciate you helping me. Really, I do. But I can't hang around here." He looked up; there was distress on Isaac's face and disappointment on Sean's. "I gotta keep moving. You understand that, don't you? I'm just passing through. If there's a blockade, I'll just retrace my steps and go in another direction. I don't care."

"Oh," Terrence said, softly. "Oh."

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Sean asked.

"I'm... I'm looking for someone."

"Is this... _someone_... alone?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

Sean nodded. His face was firm. "Then they can wait a little while longer for you."

Nick shook his head. "No. They can't. We got separated and-"

Terrence leaned back in the chair. "Well, you aren't going to be able to leave for a while." He pointed at his bandaged leg. "That's going to take a bit to heal."

"I can walk."

Now Sean was drawing himself up. It was strange, seeing such a commanding look on such a young face. "Oh, no you don't. I spent two hours digging that bullet out of you and stitching you back up. There's no way you're going to up and ruin my work."

"Just stay a few days. Rest up," Terrence said, his ever-present smile widening. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to-"

"Even if you _do_ owe us a favor," Sean interjected.

Terrence continued, glaring at his cohort. "But... I at least want you to think about it. Can you do that for me, mister?"

Nick sighed. "Yeah, I guess." _I'm not going to_, he thought.

* * *

Late that afternoon, after he'd been sleeping most of the day- which he blamed exclusively on the painkillers- the littlest of the group, Isaac, sat down on the couch next to him. Terrence and Sean were nowhere to be seen. The young boy didn't say anything, just sat there, hands folded politely in his lap.

Nick hadn't been doing much, admittedly, only sifting through his things in the duffel bag. He wanted to get rid of as much as he could, and travel light.

Isaac looked at the things he pulled out. The MRE's, the big black flashlight, the pistol. When Nick brought out the satellite phone, his pale face lit up.

"Wow, that looks expensive," he said.

Nick turned it over in his hands. "I found it in Richmond."

"Virginia?"

"No, Richmond, _Idaho_," he snapped. "Of _course,_ Virginia. How the hell do you think I got to D.C.?"

Isaac twisted his hands together and looked down at his tattered shoes. "I didn't mean to make you mad, mister." He stood up. His face was red. "I'll leave you alone, then."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Whatever, kid."

Isaac left the room, slamming the door.

Rob lay at his feet. The dog lifted his head and stared at him.

"Don't look at me like that." He scowled. "I don't like kids."

With a huff, the dog lay his head back down on his paws.

* * *

Isaac came back. His pity for the kid was quickly turning into outright irritation- he just wouldn't _leave him alone. _There was nothing terribly interesting about himself, he thought. In fact, he was amazed that his scarred face and messed up eye hadn't sent them running.

It was only an hour after he'd run the kid off, and Nick had separated what he did and did not want to carry with him. The essentials- his food, water bottles, flashlights- he set down into the duffel, each parallel with the other. He left out the other things: most of what he had found on the highway, including the road flares and the satellite phone.

The boy hovered a few yards away, glancing over the pile of random objects. Rob went to him and circled around his legs.

Nick ignored him, until the boy cleared his throat and said in his tiny voice: "Are you still mad at me?"

He looked up. Isaac adverted his eyes and stared at the wall.

"I wasn't mad at you to start with."

"You sounded mad."

"I wasn't." Nick sighed. "Look, kid. I'm tired. I've just had a bullet pulled out of my leg. I've been doing nothing but walking and shooting shit for weeks, now."

Isaac was swaying nervously on his feet. "Where did you come from?"

_God dammit_. Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nowhere in particular, really." When the boy didn't speak, he followed it up with, "North Carolina. That's where I'm from." It was as good an answer as any.

Rob moved from the kid back to his owner, stuffing his head onto his lap.

"Where did you get him? Your dog?"

"I found him," Nick said. His irritation was starting to rise. The increasingly-painful throbbing in his leg wasn't helping, either. He pulled the bottle of hydrocodone out of the bag. There weren't many left. "He found me, I guess. Whatever."

"What kind of dog is he?"

"Hell if I know," Nick shook one of the pills out onto his palm, then swallowed it dry. Hopefully he wouldn't have a reaction from mixing that and the morphine. "He's a big ass mutt."

Isaac squared his shoulders, then walked over to the couch, and sat next to him again. He took up the same position he had earlier, hands folded, avoiding eye contact.

"I wish I had a dog," he said. Sometimes, his voice was so soft that Nick wasn't sure he was speaking at all. "My step-dad had a dog, once. A black lab. Her name was-"

"This is a thrilling story," Nick coughed. The taste of the pill was bitter on the back of his tongue.

Isaac's voice fell. It looked like he was considering leaving again.

"Has Terry shown you the rest of the safe house?"

"A bit." Nick leaned his back against the arm rest, tucking his good leg up to his chest and stretching the other out onto the cushion. "I'm sort of tied to this couch, right now."

"When you can walk, I can show you. Can I show you?"

Isaac's eyes met his. He was so goddamn _polite_, and _innocent._

Nick groaned. "Yeah, I guess."

The boy smiled. It lit up his whole face, and made him look six years old.

It hit Nick like a punch in the gut. Even through all the shit going on in the world, the zombies and the military, holding out on their own without a guardian- even with himself acting like an ass- they still found time to smile.

Nick couldn't remember the last time _he _smiled.

"You okay, mister?" Isaac stared at him. He looked worried. "Are you gonna puke? Do you need a bowl?"

"Fine," Nick replied automatically. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Sean says that sometimes, pain medication can make you sick."

"It's not the medication," Nick said quietly. "I'm just tired."

"Okay. Want me to let you sleep?"

"Yes."

Isaac nodded, and smiled again. "Okay. See you, mister."

"Later."

Nick stared at the ceiling and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.

* * *

True to his word, the little boy led him around the safe house. It was impressive, when compared to other safe houses he'd seen. Every part of the original building had a use- the store shelves held their clothes, guns, and food. The little shopping carts held random trinkets that they must have collected out in the city. It was as if the pharmacy had been built with this purpose in mind.

The only windows were narrow, and tall. They were boarded up tight and easily defensible. Above them, the fluorescent lights flickered.

"You guys have a generator?" Nick asked as he limped along, using a shelf for support.

"City's still got power, but yeah," Isaac replied, keeping his pace slow so he could walk next to him. "I think the army might be trying to track us down with the power grid. Their technology isn't as advanced as they want us to think, though."

The boy pulled down a patched-up rifle from the shelf and continued. "Internet servers are down. Satellites are down. Most everything doesn't work anymore. Phones, cable TV. You know. But we've got electricity, at least."

"Huh," Nick muttered. "Better than nothing, eh?"

Isaac smiled up at him. God, he was scrawny. "That's right. We have a generator anyway, just in case they decide to shut down the grid." He turned the rifle over and put it back on the shelf, picking up a different one. This one was obviously of higher caliber, with an attached scope. Isaac began disassembling it, placing each part back onto the shelf as Nick watched.

"You're pretty good at that."

"Thanks, mister. I had a BB gun growing up. I used to take it apart all the time. My mom would get so mad."

Nick leaned against the shelf. "I don't think taking apart a BB gun and taking apart a weapon like _that_ are the same thing."

Isaac pulled the scope away from the stock, and kept it, laying the rest of the gun back down. "They aren't. But the basics are still there. I think." He looked through the scope, then handed it to him. "This is a good one," he said. "Take a look."

Nick picked up the heavy attachment and stared through it with his good eye. The image was sharp and clear. "Pretty good," he said, lowering it. "Can't scope a shotgun, though."

"Not the shotgun. The rifle," Isaac smiled. "Your other gun."

Gregory's rifle. Nick shook his head. "I don't think I'm going to keep it," he said. "I'm not sure what ammo it takes, and I'm not good with the lever-action."

"Okay. Well, I'll see what else I can do for you."

Nick rubbed at the back of his neck. "I don't need you to give me a gun, kid. I have the shotgun. It works fine."

Isaac looked up at him. "And your aim? How is that?"

"It's_ fine_. God."

The boy smiled. "Mister, I'm a sniper. You can't lie to me." He waved at the left side of his face. "Compensating for having only one eye is a lot harder than it sounds, isn't it?"

Nick sighed, and relented. "You have no idea."

"This is why I'm trying to get you a scope."

"I..." he turned the object over and over in his hands. "Kid, I don't get why you're trying to help me so much. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the easiest guy to get along with."

Isaac shrugged. "Well,_ I_ like you."

"You're making a huge mistake," he said.

"Mr. Nick, I don't think you're as big of a jerk as you think you are."

"You're right. It's worse."

The little boy's earlier trepidation had melted away. Now he kept that soft smile on his face and said, "I think you're scared to trust us."

"I'm not scared," Nick growled defensively. "It's _practical_. I can't exactly say I've seen my fair share of trustworthy people around here. Take your old man of the subway, for instance. He was a great joy to be around, and hey, guess what? H_e tried to kill me!_"

The boy gazed evenly at him. "Don't you think if we _were _going to kill you," Isaac said, never breaking eye contact, "we would have done it before taking you here and fixing your leg?"

Nick looked away and rubbed at his bad eye. A headache was starting to form behind it. "Judging by how my week is going, I wouldn't be surprised if you kept me around for food or some shit."

Isaac laughed. It was a clear, ringing giggle, and for a second, Nick had trouble breathing.

It was not the kind of sound he was used to hearing.

"Trust me," Isaac said between chuckles, "we aren't going to eat you."

"I'd be too stringy, anyway."

The kid laughed again.

Nick continued with, "And I probably taste like an old boot. An old boot on a zombie. A zombie in a swamp."

Isaac was beaming. "You're pretty funny."

"No, I'm actually still a jerk," Nick said, a strange feeling coming into his chest. What was that? Was he getting sick?

No. This was something different. He recognized it. It was the same feeling he had when he'd taken his wife on their first date, when they'd joke together on the back porch of a forgotten house. It felt alien. He wasn't sure if he should be savoring it or rejecting it.

Nick smiled. It felt even stranger, and made the bruise on his cheek flare in pain.

"So what's in the rest of the safe house?" he asked, and Isaac led him on.

* * *

The pharmacy wasn't as large as Nick thought. It wasn't long before they were in a waiting room, which he barely recognized as the room Terrence had dragged him into.

There was still a blood-stain on the floor.

Isaac drew his attention away from it and showed him a cot set up into a corner. There were a few posters on the wall above it, advertising baseball stars and comics.

"This is my space," the boy said, sitting down on the cot. "That's Sean's," he pointed to a similar cot across from his, piled with blankets and a stuffed giraffe- a sight that made that strange feeling twist in his chest again. "Terry stays on the other side. Near the exit door."

Nick could feel the chill air blowing in from outside the steel barricade. "It got kind of cold, didn't it?"

"Well, it _is _December," Isaac pointed out, pulling out a box from underneath his cot.

"December? Already?" Hadn't it just been November? It had been the fifth of that month when the ship went down. "What day is it?"

"The seventh. It's Tuesday."

_Well, _that's_ little easier to deal with,_ Nick thought. He hadn't worried about the actual day of the week since he'd first met Coach and the others on top of a burning hotel. It was odd to wonder about it again.

"Come and sit," Isaac said, patting the space next to him on the cot. "I bet your leg hurts real bad."

Nick accepted, grunting as he sat down. Even the short trip around the safe house had been enough to make the gnawing pain in his leg come back, until it felt as if he hadn't taken medication at all.

Around the corner came Sean, with Rob close on his heels. The dog followed the boys around a lot, begging for attention or hands to lick. He trotted straight to Nick as soon as he saw him, his tail flipping about rapidly.

"Hey guys," Sean said, waving his hand. He looked at Nick. "How's the leg?"

"Hurts," Nick said. He wasn't gonna lie to the kid, especially if it got him more morphine.

"Well, of course it's going to hurt, you're walking around and you just got shot last night."

Isaac's shoulders slumped. "Sorry, Sean. I thought it would be okay."

"I'm more worried about him throwing a clot or something, Izzy."

"A clot?" Nick asked as he scratched Rob's ears idly.

"Well, I guess that happens, I don't know. When someone bleeds a lot. I read that you can get a heart attack or a stroke 'cause the clotted blood can move around your body."

"Are you serious?"

Sean shrugged. "I don't even know if it's possible or not. I heard about it in a TV show."

Nick studied him. "It's good to know where my doctor got his medical knowledge."

The boy glared right back. "Saved your life, didn't I?" He was obviously not as easy-going as the other two- his face was a lot more serious and his voice a bit more mature.

Nick rolled his eyes. There was the exasperation again, leaping up into his thoughts like a reflex. "Yeah, okay, I get it, you brought me back from death's door. Thank God, praise Jesus, and all that bullshit."

"You owe me one."

"How about you send me a bill?"

"How about I punch you in the face?"

Isaac whined. "Guys..."

Nick sneered. "I thought doctors were supposed to 'do no harm.'"

"You _were_ my patient. Now you're just living in my house."

"Guys. Please don't fight," Isaac begged. "Please."

Sean glanced quickly between the two of them, and then his body relaxed. "All right, all right." He flopped down on his cot with a _whuff_ of escaping air. "This isn't over, mister."

"I'll be waiting," Nick teased.

"You watch yourself," Sean warned, but his words had become innocuous, and a small grin had appeared on his face.

Nick realized that somehow, his exasperation had turned into downright sport. He was _having fun with this kid, _and the kid had been having fun right back. When the hell did that happen?

Isaac had pulled a big white binder from the box under his cot. "Um. I got this collection of baseball cards. You wanna see 'em?"

"Oh, God, Izzy, don't bother him with _that_," Sean groaned, raising himself up on one elbow.

Nick shook his head. "He's fine. Lemme see, kid."

It might be the last time this boy- this child- would be allowed to do something that wasn't directly related to shooting something else.

Isaac was outright bouncy with enthusiasm, the way Rob would get whenever there was food around. He opened the binder to reveal the cards, all set in plastic sheets, with dozens of baseball players grinning hollowly up from the cardboard pictures.

"This here is my favorite. It's Mickey Mantle. Have you heard of him?"

"No."

"He's the greatest baseball player to ever have swung a bat," the boy said, rubbing the protective plastic that the card was nestled in.

"Too bad; he's probably a zombie now."

"No, he's not," Isaac glared up at him. "He died in 1995."

Nick frowned. "Oh."

Isaac continued. "This is Sammy Sosa," he said, pointing to one of a grinning black man. "He helped break the record for most runs in a season."

"I think I remember hearing about that," Nick lied, trying to feign interest and instead finding his interest was genuine. It definitely wasn't the drugs doing it, either.

Issac pointed at another with a fingertip. This one had a red-headed man with biceps that looked on-par with a Tank's. "This guy is Mark McGwire. He made seventy runs in one season, can you believe that?"

"I wonder how many heads he could knock off with those arms."

"Oh, at least a dozen at once, _for sure_," Issac said, grinning.

Sean chuckled low from across the room, but was looking away, as if he didn't want to be caught doing it.

Nick was smiling again, but it felt as if the muscles on his face didn't want to stretch that way. He blamed it on his bruised cheek, and focused on the cards.

"I keep a lookout for these when we're out in the city," Isaac said, turning another page. "We find lots of cool stuff."

"Must be hard when the military's out to get you."

"Well, the good thing about them, is that they usually won't wander too far from the Mall. Usually."

"The Mall?"

Isaac laughed. "You're such a tourist. You know, the Mall? Where all the historical buildings are? The Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial?"

Oh. Right. Nick nodded. "So they've holed up there, huh?"

"Yup. You know, I'm surprised they haven't dropped the nukes yet," Issac said, his voice calm and easy as if he were talking about the weather. He turned another page. "You'd think they would."

Nick felt cold again. "I guess so."

"All the zombies around, I wonder if they've lost contact with their nuclear weapons."

"I don't really want to think about it."

The boy was smiling. "What's to worry about, mister? At least it'd be quick."

Nick shook his head. "Well, there wouldn't be much left, would there?"

"There isn't much left at all, anymore," Sean spoke up from across the room. "The whole world's broke already. Those military guys are just running around in circles, trying to rebuild stuff that's not working anymore."

Isaac looked thoughtful. "Maybe the world was meant to break apart," he said in his tiny voice. "So we could fix it. And make it right, this time around. Make it _better_." He shut the binder, placed it back under his cot. "I think that's why this happened. There were too many things wrong with the world, and not enough that was _right._"

Nick became aware that he was staring, and looked across at Sean, who held his gaze.

There was a lot brewing there, just underneath the teenager's face, words that would never be said, thoughts that would never be shared. Nick saw frustration and exhaustion and also something that was strong and unyielding, something Nick thought he wouldn't be able to grasp in his lifetime.

It was something they all had, these boys, and somehow, with Isaac's tranquil voice and Sean's strong will and Terrence's never-ending smile, they were sharing it with him.

Nick looked down at Rob.

He'd made his choice.

* * *

_(A/N: Oh, Nick. I guess you_ do _have a heart. Somewhere in there. Maybe. Or not.  
_

_Thanks to Yggi, my name-fiend, thanks to Kit, my beta reader and fellow rider of the soundwaves, and thanks to Rik [insert dirty in-joke here]. You guys are just way too awesome to me._

_I did some dabbling in a different fandom- Knight Rider [yeah the show about the talking car]- and the fic is about a zombie apocalypse. You can blame L4D2 for that. It'll be up shortly if anyone's interested._

_Coming up next: The Tactician. In which Nick does some thinking.)  
_


	12. The Tactician

Time passed in the D.C. safe house. It was a Tuesday when Nick had decided what he was going to do, but it would be another week before he would actually be able to do anything. For now, he had to let his leg heal, or he wouldn't be doing anything at all, ever again.

That night, Nick was on the couch, which had become his own space. He was drifting lazily on painkillers and trying to focus on reading a book that Sean had gotten him. His efforts were fruitless; his eye kept skipping over words without his mind retaining them and soon he'd find himself four pages ahead with no idea how he'd gotten there.

A soft _bang_ drew his attention- the sound of the steel door on the other end of the safe house opening. Rob jumped up from the floor next to the couch and ran off to investigate, while Nick put aside the book and reached for his shotgun. Just in case.

"Hey, Rob," he heard Terrence's excited voice say, "did'ja miss me? Did'ja? What a good dog!"

The eldest boy had been gone most of the day, doing whatever it was he did out there in the city. Nick assumed scavenging or scouting. He put the shotgun back down on the floor and fished the book back into his hands.

Rob came trotting back into the room, Terrence behind him. There was a large red bag slung over his shoulder.

"Gotcha somethin'," he said.

Nick shut the book. "What's that?"

Terrence heaved the bag off of his shoulder and onto the floor. 'VETERINARY DIET LARGE BREED DOG FOOD,' it said in bright white letters. Rob was sniffing it at it already.

"I've never given him dog food," Nick said, lowering his leg gingerly to the floor. The change in blood pressure made it feel heavy and useless, and it throbbed dully behind the painkillers.

"We were feeding him crackers while you were out."

"He'll eat pretty much anything, I think."

Terrence pulled a pocketknife out of his jeans and cut the top of the bag open. Rob was sticking his nose inside already, claws tapping on the linoleum as his feet shifted about in excitement.

"Just a minute," the teenager laughed, producing a plastic bowl from a nearby cupboard. He stuck it in the bag and filled it with kibble before placing it on the floor in front of the dog.

To say that Rob had inhaled the food would be a bit of an understatement. It was more like a vacuum had replaced Nick's dog, and not anything like a cheap Bissell- like a ten horsepower shop-vac. The kibble was gone in moments.

"It's like you've never seen food before!" the boy exclaimed, laughing.

Terrence filled the bowl again, and this time the dog ate a little slower, actually taking time to chew the kibbles before swallowing.

Nick watched him, then cleared his throat. "Thanks, kid."

"No problem. I remembered seeing it a few weeks ago and went back to get it."

"You didn't run into the military or anything, right?"

Terrence folded down the top of the bag and set it on the table. "Oh, goodness no. I know where they like to hang around. You can usually hear 'em before you see 'em, too." He crossed the room and sat on the couch next to him, stretching out his arms.

Nick rubbed at his face. The stubble there had grown to damn-near a full beard already. He considered asking the boys for a razor, and thought better of it. Maybe it would help keep his face warm in the upcoming winter.

"So, how are you feeling?"

"Kind of bored, actually."

Terrence chuckled. "Sorry. There isn't much I can do about that." He glanced around the room. "You know, that TV works. We have a few movies if you wanna watch 'em."

Nick shook his head, turning the book over in his hands. He let out a deep breath. "I've been thinking," he started, hesitantly. For the first time in a long time, he wasn't sure what the hell to say next.

"Yeah?" Terrence looked up at him. "About what?"

"Well, I... think Sean is right. I think I owe you a favor."

He could see the look coming onto the teenager's face, which was still colored by a black bruise around his eye. There was hope and astonishment painted there- his voice, however, was calm and flat. "And?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure how much help I can be with _this_," he motioned to the bandages on his leg, "but I'm here now, aren't I? Nothing much else to do."

"Are you going to help us get out?" Terrence asked, looking like he was afraid to believe him.

"Why don't you tell me what you know," Nick allowed himself a small smile- he blamed it inwardly on the drugs, of course, "and I'll see what I can do to help you out."

The kid's face split into a huge grin, and for a moment Nick feared he was going to get a hug. But he just pumped his fist and said, "_Yesss_!"

"Now, now," Nick warned, "don't you think for a second that I'm doing this all for you guys. I want to get the hell out of here too. I have someplace I need to go." He sighed. "But while I'm here..."

"I gotta tell the others," Terrence said, giddiness in his voice, "I'll tell you everything you want to know in a bit. Okay?"

He was off, dashing out of the room. Already Nick could hear him telling the others, their voices muffled but raised.

Rob came over and lay next to him, looking content. He rested his head on Nick's foot.

Well, he couldn't turn back anymore. It was set.

He just had to follow through, and hope he hadn't dug his own grave by doing so.

* * *

Terrence came back with a large map folded up into a thick rectangle. He flapped it open and set it down on the table.

Nick came over with a halting pace and dragged up a plastic chair.

"This is the area we're working with here," the boy explained. He pointed to a red square that had been drawn in with crayon. "This is our safe house- where we are now." It was a map of the D.C. area, showing all the streets and highways, subway entrances and monuments.

Terrence moved his hand northward, where a black line had been drawn. "This is the barricade. They set it up as a way to control the evacuation, and now they won't let anyone in or out."

"I didn't see anything down south," Nick said, pointing to Arlington, where he'd entered. There were black lines here, as well, obviously meaning places where the Army had holed up. "But I heard a lot of guns."

"You're lucky you took the subway tunnels, or they would have gotten you long before you reached this place," Terrence said. He tapped a symbol for the Metro, down south, near the black lines. "You must have entered around here, and bypassed the south barricade completely."

Nick scratched his head. "Why weren't they in the subway? Maybe they were scared of Gregory, too," he mused, only half-joking.

Terrence chuckled. "Likely, they just don't want to be in a place without electricity."

"All right, well, that makes sense."

The boy returned his finger to the north. "Anyway, they're still at this post here- this barricade."

"Probably a first guard or something, to keep zombies from the Mall," Nick said. "Or carriers."

Terrence nodded, pulling up a chair to sit in. "So, there's no way we're getting in or out of here, so long as they identify us as carriers. We'll be shot on sight."

Nick pointed to a green square a fair distance away, northwest of their safe house. "What's this?"

"That's a supply depot, I think. I only saw it once, a few weeks ago."

"What's in it?"

"The whole area is fenced off. It's got a bunch of their big trucks inside of it, a few tents."

"Trucks. What kind of trucks?"

Terrence was rubbing the back of his neck. "I wasn't really paying attention to that. I was mostly worried about being noticed and killed." He was frowning, eyes deep in thought. "I'm pretty sure they're the big flat kind."

"Big and _flat_?" Nick raised an eyebrow. "You mean a Hummer?"

"Uhh, maybe? I don't know much about cars, sorry."

Nick moved his eyes back to the safe house, and the northern barricade. _Think_, he thought. _You're good at that. Figure it out. How the hell are you going to get them- _you_- out of here?_

"Any more questions?"

"A few." Nick ran his hands through his hair, catching his fingers in the tangles. "Do you know what kind of firepower they have? Are we talking just assault rifles or can we be expecting some bazookas?"

"I've only ever seen them using those rifles. But I've _heard_ explosions."

"If there are other survivors in the Capital, it could be from them."

Terrence smiled sadly. "I haven't seen another carrier in probably two weeks."

"Great," Nick exhaled, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. He was getting really tired of his leg hurting _all the damn time._ "Why did I even come through here in the first place?" he asked to no-one.

The teenager answered, anyway. "I have to say, it wasn't the best of plans. But hey, at least you met up with us. That's gotta count for something, right?"

Nick didn't answer. He stared at the map and wracked his mind for a way out of this mess.

* * *

"Careful," Sean barked. "You do know that you lost, like, a ton of blood, right?"

Nick was feeling particularly annoyed this morning, and just glared from where he was hobbling across the main room. "I can't sit around anymore. I'm going to lose my goddamn mind."

It was Wednesday. He had been in the safe house for two days.

"I bet you're dizzy as hell right now," Sean said from where he was reclining on his cot.

"Oh, shut up," Nick growled, leaning against a shelf to catch his breath. "What the hell do you know anyway? You're just a kid."

"My mom was a certified nurse. I knew CPR by the time I was nine."

"You also said your track record is less than stellar."

Sean now sat up, eyes narrowed. "It's hard to be successful when you're working with salvaged stuff and patients that tend to fight when they're being fixed."

Nick started moving again, placing the bad leg down slowly. _Jesus,_ it hurt. Not as much as the wound that had left him half-blind, but it was a close goddamn second. He let out a deep breath through his nose, sucked another one in through his mouth. "Whatever," he grunted, feeling out-of-breath and nauseated.

"Don't _'whatever' _me," the kid continued. "You know that black eye that Terry has? That was _you._"

"What?" Nick stopped and looked up. "Bullshit."

"Go ahead and ask him."

"I don't remember it."

Sean smiled grimly. "You wouldn't; you were doped on morphine at the time."

Nick crossed the rest of the way slowly and sank down into a plastic chair. "I don't even know where the hell Terrence is. Besides..." he leaned his head on the backrest, "...I think I'm gonna be sittin' here a while."

"You know it's going to take a few weeks for your blood to restore itself, right?" Sean laid back down on his cot and stared up at the ceiling. "You think you're bored now? Come see me when you can actually walk."

"We'll be out of here by then," Nick said. "At least, I will be."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Positive." He leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. A couple of ideas were starting to come to his mind, and he cultivated them.

* * *

It was Thursday night. Nick sat at the rickety lounge room table with the boys and ate. Sean was a crappy cook, but it was food- some kind of creamy white soup- and it was warm.

The other three seemed to be racing to see who could eat the fastest. Nick ate slowly, not really caring about the flavor. Nothing tasted _good_ anymore. He couldn't even remember what a steak dinner was supposed to taste like. MRE's and canned food were about all he'd eaten in three months.

Except for when they were on that Cajun boat, when Virgil had cooked up a huge meal for the five of them, fish and crab and vegetables. It might have been the last time he'd ever actually enjoyed food. He could remember Ellis cracking some stupid joke about his friend Keith, and listening to the others laugh while a scowl came upon his own face.

Nick rubbed at his ruined eye, at the thick scar tissue around it, and suppressed the feeling of regret building cold in his gut. God, the world sure had changed. He wasn't supposed to care about this bullshit.

He wasn't supposed to get _attached_ to people.

"Hey, mister?" Isaac held the pot up with the spoon. "There's about one serving left here. I think you ought to have it, huh?" Without waiting for an answer, he refilled Nick's bowl.

He picked at it, staring at the grooves on the table, thinking, thinking, thinking.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." Nick barely registered saying it, the phrase was so clockwork to him.

The bullet wound was healing. A few more days, he estimated.

* * *

Friday morning. Nick was gritting his teeth and bumping the back of his head against the headrest of the couch as Sean pulled the bandages off the wound to clean it.

He really, _really_ wanted a hot shower, but the kid wouldn't let him until the hole in his leg had gotten better. He didn't argue- it was still a pretty big hole. Apparently Sean had to make it _bigger_ in order to get the bullet out. At least he'd been unconscious for that.

"It doesn't look like it's getting infected," Sean had said as he unwrapped the bandages. "Usually, it's the little pieces of clothing that get pushed into the wound- that's what causes the infection. I was afraid you'd go septic without antibiotics."

"You have _morphine_, but not antibiotics."

"Well, this place got raided before we got here, you know. The morphine was locked away. Terry broke into it."

"Makes sense- _aagh!"_

"Oh, stop being a baby."

It was only agonizing when Sean was prodding at it like a curious toddler. After that, it wasn't too bad. He could even walk again without wanting to fall down and curl up into a ball.

"I'm- I'm not being a _baby._ I got shot!"

At this, Sean paused, and tugged the collar of his shirt away from his left shoulder. There was a deep scar underneath his collarbone. It was well-healed, but the wound had been large. "I was awake for this. I had to talk Isaac through taking the bullet out."

Nick pointed at his own face. "Eighty goddamn stitches."

Sean's mouth dropped open for a second, then closed.

"You wanna talk about _hurt_? They had to put my fucking eyeball back together. And I didn't _get_ morphine."

The kid was quiet as he started to wrap his leg back up with clean gauze. "Wow," he finally said. "Uh, I guess you win."

"Yeah, I won the 'nastiest zombie attack' award. Awesome."

"Was it a Cryer?"

"A what?"

"You know. The girl zombies. They're always crying. Big claws."

Nick blinked hard. Jesus, just _hearing_ about them nowadays was starting to freak him out. "We called them Witches," he said, his voice betraying none of his thoughts. "And yes. This is what happens when you're a fucking idiot and don't pay enough attention to cover your face."

"Why didn't you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Sean's lips thinned into a small, straight line. "Fair enough." He taped down the clean gauze and snapped his fingers. "There you go. All done. Tomorrow, I think we can leave it open to air. It'll heal faster."

Nick leaned his head back on the couch. "Terrific."

The young man was tossing the dirty bandages into a plastic bag. "You know what I always say? Pain breaks through, but blood always heals."

The survivor, not bothering to answer, studied the ceiling. He was sure he knew every detail of it by now.

Sean's words repeated in his head. Pain breaks through.

Break through.

Nick's thoughts chased each other with plans.

* * *

On Saturday evening, he was napping on the couch with his arm thrown over his face when noises awoke him. The sounds of growling engines and shifting car gears, and squealing tires on pavement. It reminded him immediately of the blue stock car from Georgia. He jerked up into a sitting position, looking around.

Sean and Isaac were sitting side-by-side in front of the TV. Rob was laying down behind them. On the television, Nick could see they were playing some kind of video game. They were racing cars.

He moved his legs off the side of the couch and yawned. "What the hell is that?" he asked.

"Gran Turismo 3," Sean answered, without looking away from the screen.

Nick watched. The car on the left, a red thing with a spoiler, was twisting all over the place. The one on the right was making cautious, gentle turns.

"Gonna get ya," Isaac kept saying. "Gonna get ya, gonna get ya, gonna get ya!"

The first car got hit with the second car, and Sean was groaning.

"Stop hitting me, Izzy!"

"This is how to win!"

Isaac started laughing, and Sean shoved him.

"Ack! Cheating, cheating!"

"Screw you, you started it!"

"God, do you two ever shut up?" Nick growled, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The noise of the game stopped. "Sorry, mister," Isaac said, looking at him sheepishly.

Sean frowned. "We were being quiet. I thought you were asleep."

"I _was_," Nick grumbled, getting to his feet. He stretched his leg cautiously. It felt like one giant bruise. "Where did you get a video game, anyway?"

"Terry found it in a house somewhere."

Sean turned back to the television and un-paused the game. Nick wandered a bit closer, watching the screen.

"Are you the red one, Sean?"

"Yeah."

"God, you suck at that."

"Hey. Shut up."

"Isaac is pretty good, though."

"Thanks, mister."

Nick pulled up one of the plastic chairs, reaching down to pet Rob.

The screen cheerily announced that 'Player One'- Isaac- had won the race. He waved his hands in the air crazily.

"I win!"

"You cheated," Sean said bitterly.

"It's not _cheating._ It's _creative problem solving._"

Nick smiled, and almost laughed. "Remind me to never let you drive, Sean." His plan was skipping across his mind again, like a stone on a millpond, each impact spreading the idea deeper and deeper into his thoughts.

"How good are _you_ at driving?" Sean asked. "Can you drive at all?"

"I'm not gonna lie about it, kid. I haven't driven a car in a long, long time. But I can tell you right now I could do better than _that_."

The young man handed him the game controller. "Prove it."

Nick pushed it back into his hands. "No."

Sean shoved the controller back at him. It became a game of reverse tug-of-war. "Come on, big guy. Put your money where your mouth is."

"I don't gotta put anything anywhere."

"Coward."

Nick scowled. He took the controller. "Asshat."

As it turned out, he really _sucked_ at video games.

Twenty minutes later, Sean was bent over in laughter, and Nick gaped at the smoking digital wreck of what had once been the car he was racing, while Isaac drove his past the finish line.

* * *

Sunday came and went. Nick stared at the map for most of that afternoon, and drew in paths and ideas with a splintered ballpoint pen.

* * *

When Monday broke open an icy chill that permeated the entire safe house, Nick huddled down on the couch under a blanket and scribbled into a wrinkled paper notebook.

Terrence came in with a box under his arm. His cheeks were red with the cold.

"Hey. What'cha doin'?"

"Thinking," Nick said. It had been his reply to that sort of question for most of the week.

"Okay. Well, I got you something."

"Stop getting me things," he griped.

It was a set of clean clothes. Nick stopped complaining and accepted them. The jeans he'd been wearing for the last month were really starting to break down. Especially since Sean had cut a lot of one leg away so he could get at the bullet.

"I thought you could use them," Terrence said. "Don't worry, they're clean."

Nick pulled out a black fleece jacket. It was incredibly soft. "Looks warm."

"Yeah, you'll need it. It's started to snow."

"Snow? Already?"

"Yeah, well, it's actually kind of late this year."

Nick nodded. "Lived here a long time, huh?"

"All my life, sir."

"Don't call me that."

Terrence raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Stop calling me 'sir.' And 'mister.' All of you. Just... call me Nick."

"But... that's disrespectful."

"And I'm not much to be respected," Nick told him.

In truth, the title of 'sir' made him feel old, and the thought of gray hairs and wrinkles, on failing vision where his was already half-gone, made him extremely uncomfortable.

* * *

The next day, he was allowed a shower. Nick stood under the hot spray of the jury-rigged bath and smiled. It felt like Christmas, and, judging by that day's proximity to the holiday, it could have very well been his present that year.

He'd always liked to be clean, washed his hands a lot- but that was before the Infection. Coach had called him obsessive-compulsive. Maybe. Nick didn't have much time to worry about hand sanitizer anymore. Besides, if his body could live with housing the zombie virus, he was pretty sure he could take on a common cold.

Nick stayed in there until the water began to run cold, then shut it off. He pulled a threadbare towel off of a shelf made from milk crates and wrapped it around himself, shivering.

This had probably been the public bathroom. There was a mirror against the wall that had collected steam. Nick wiped a bit of it off and gazed darkly at himself.

God damn, he looked like hell. The scars were lightening up a bit at least, no longer that awful dark pink color. His damp hair fell down around his face and he thought of homeless men that would gather around barrels of fire, an image he recalled from his childhood. He reached up and brushed it back with one hand. It was getting pretty long.

Nick could see the exhaustion on his face, and he sighed, turning away from the mirror. He couldn't look at himself anymore. God, he was ugly.

It was getting cold. Nick dried himself quickly and pulled on his new, clean clothes, taking care to be gentle around his healing leg. Putting on clothing that wasn't stiff with zombie blood or torn up- that was a good feeling. He tugged the fleece jacket over his head, and brushed off invisible lint. An old habit that was hard to break.

The plan stood solid in his mind, like the bastions of a castle. All the outcomes had been determined. All the components had been studied and worked out. Nick could walk again, shoot again, survive again. Rob was antsy. He wanted out just as much as his owner did. The boys were on-edge. They knew that their time in D.C. was quickly coming to cessation.

It had been a week.

Nick was ready.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Yggi, my semi-final Airbender, and to Kit, my beta-reader and car dealership. [Get well soon. I mean it.]_

_To Ryna-Chan: Thank you for all of your reviews. As a general note, the chapter titles are oftentimes used to describe more than one person._

_Coming up next: The Smart Shopper. In which Nick finds a new best friend._

_I may not update next week as I will be without internet at that time. But we'll see. Thanks for reading!)  
_


	13. The Smart Shopper

"This is what I need, Terry."

Nick placed the scrap of lined paper on the table. On it was a list he'd jotted out in his cramped cursive handwriting.

The teenager leaned forward and picked it up, eyes skirting it.

"An air horn?"

"Trust me, okay?"

"Well, some of this stuff we have in the safe house." Terrence tapped the paper. "A knife with a serrated blade?"

"A steak knife might work fine." Nick said, holding out his hands to indicate the size he preferred. "It needs to be strong, though. And as sharp as you can get it."

"Okay." The teenager turned to the door. "I'll see what I can find."

* * *

Terrence returned to him with a tackle box in his arms.

"Here. I got most of it here in the safe house."

Nick looked up from where he was leaning over the map, trying to memorize it. "Great. Let me see."

There were a few different knives in the box. Some of them were short and stubby, but the one Nick pulled out of the pile looked like a hunting knife, with a heavy wooden handle and slight curve to the tip of the blade.

"Not too sharp, is it?" he observed, pushing the knife against his palm.

"I'll have to see if I can find a whetstone," Terrence said, pulling out a pair of wire cutters. "We haven't got an air horn. I need to go out for one of those, too."

Nick put the knife down and accepted the wire cutters. "I hope these aren't as weak as they look," he murmured, setting them down next to the blade.

"Here's some screwdrivers. Flathead, right? I got a couple of them."

"Perfect." Nick took the longest two.

"Flashlight. Matches. Duct tape, bungee cord." Terrence cocked his head. "Just what are you planning to do with all of this stuff, anyway?"

"I already told you. I'm getting us out of here."

The teenager's shoulders slumped. "I was hoping for some more details, actually."

Nick pushed away from the table without answering. "Well, we've got this stuff. Let's go get the rest of it."

Terrence looked surprised. "You're coming with me?"

"I need you to show me the supply depot," Nick said, pointing to the green square on the map. "I want to see _exactly_ what's in there, how many soldiers, zombies, whatever."

"Well, all right. You sure you're good to walk already?"

Nick nodded. "I'm fine. Let's go."

* * *

They passed Sean and Isaac on their way out of the pharmacy. Both looked up as they went toward the exit door. Rob was hovering around Nick's feet, eager to leave.

"Where are you going?" Isaac asked, climbing off of his cot.

"We're gonna get the last of the stuff on Nick's list," Terrence said. He tugged a knitted hat over his head and slipped a backpack over his shoulders. "You guys stay here."

Nick found his shotgun on a table next to the door. Having it back in his hands was a familiar, welcome feeling. He slipped a box of shells into the teenager's backpack.

"You want a hat?" Terrence asked, producing a second one from the shelf.

"Nah." Nick shook his head. "I'm not too fond of 'em."

"It's pretty freaking cold outside. I think you should take it."

With a roll of his eyes, he grabbed the hat and pulled it over his head. "Okay?"

"Cool. Let's go."

Sean's voice called out in a warning as they opened the door. "If you screw up your leg out there again, don't come crying to me!"

"Whatever," Nick said. Rob was right behind him. He shooed the dog back inside. "No. You stay here."

Rob's tail sunk down to the ground, but Nick was already on his way out again. "Keep an eye on my dog," he ordered to Isaac.

"I'll take care of him," the boy said, puffing out his chest with the promise of responsibility.

Nick followed Terrence outside. Everything was white, covered with snow, and cold. Their breath fogged in the air.

"I haven't seen snow in years," Nick muttered.

"Yeah." Terrence's voice was quiet. "It looks a lot nicer out here when you can't see blood all over the place."

"No doubt." Nick leaned his shotgun on his shoulder. "Where to?"

The teenager began down the street and turned right. "There's a sporting goods store around here somewhere. Maybe we can get a sharpener there."

They crossed an intersection, walking around the crashed cars and piles of bodies that looked less frightening when they were covered in snow.

"You know," Nick started, adjusting his grip on the shotgun, "I think I'm going to append that list."

"Yeah? Is there something else you want?"

"A pair of gloves. It's fuckin' cold out here."

"Told you so." Terrence laughed softly. "I have some at the safe house. I'll give them to you when we get back."

"That would be nice."

The snow made the air around them strangely quiet, as if its presence was muting everything. They moved between buildings, keeping to the alleys. Not a single zombie stirred around them.

"Where are they?" Nick wondered aloud. "Did they all freeze to death?"

"Not likely," Terrence stopped at the corner of a building, looked this way and that. "At least, not the big ones. The really mutated zombies. I've been seeing more of them than the regular guys. You know, the ones that actually look like people."

"Maybe they're all that's left. Heh, wouldn't that be nice?"

"I dunno," the teenager blew into his hands and stomped his feet a bit. "I think I prefer the little zombies."

"Yeah. We wouldn't want to run into a Tank down here, that's for sure," Nick joked, but the young man stared at him with some strange, confused look. "It's not like I was summoning one, jeez."

"What's a Tank?"

Oh. Nick had forgotten that not every survivor went by the same nicknames he had. "The big one. The biggest of them all. No jaw, huge arms? You know."

"Right." Terrence nodded. "We don't call 'em that." His face flushed a little, and not just from the cold. "We called them 'Destruct-O.'"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"It was Isaac's idea. He likes comic books."

"What did you call a Smoker? The one with the tongue? Mister Fantastic?"

Terrence's lips quirked in a smile. "Mister _Tongue_, actually."

Nick scoffed. "You have some strange names for zombies, kid."

"Yeah, because 'Smoker' is so original."

"It makes sense. They explode into smoke, come on."

"I don't like the way they smell." Terrence wiped his nose as if there were one around at that exact moment. "They're the worst of them all."

Nick stepped straight onto a dismembered skull and tripped, almost face-planting into the snow. Terrence caught him by the arm.

"Whoa! Careful. Are you _sure_ you're okay to walk?"

Embarrassed, he shoved the kid's hand off him. "I just tripped. I'm not limping."

"Okay, okay. Well, we're almost there. Just a bit further."

They came around a corner and into the parking lot of the sporting goods store. The large red letters were still visible on the outer sign, reading 'SPORTS 4 ALL.' Nick glanced around, expecting to see zombies in the huge, open space, but there was nothing. He was beginning to wonder why he'd even brought a gun. Terrence only carried a pistol, in a harness on his thigh.

"I haven't been in here yet," the teenager said, keeping in step beside him. "I have no idea what could be inside."

"Maybe it's full of beautiful women and delicious candies," Nick jibed, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder to rub his hands together. His fingers were stiff and painful in the chill.

"Pfft. Yeah. And I'm King Midas, everything I touch turns to gold," Terrence snickered.

The two of them approached the entryway quietly. All of the glass of the doors and windows had been broken long ago, and were now boarded with slats of wood and particleboard. Nick walked up to the door, peering in through a crack in the wood with his good eye.

"Can you see anything?" Terrence asked, hovering close to his shoulder.

"Not really."

Nick stepped back and paced down the length of the store, tapping the barricade with the barrel of his shotgun to check for weak spots. He found a place that sounded mostly hollow, and waved Terrence over.

"Let's break in here," he said, hitting the wood again. "You're gonna have to kick it down. Sean'll beat my ass if I screw up my leg out here."

Terrence smiled and nodded. "Well, you're right about that." He backed up a few paces.

As he rushed up to kick it, there was a low roar from the other side, and the wood buckled and splintered apart as a Charger rammed straight through, grabbing at Terrence on its way out.

"Shit! Oh, _shit_!" the teenager screamed, but the zombie had him in its grip and was taking off through the parking lot, kicking up snow as it went.

Nick's reflexes took control before he could realize they had. He'd brought the shotgun up and fired it in nearly the same motion, lunging after the Charger, pulling the trigger as he gave chase.

"Help! Help!" Terrence was shrieking, the panic high and shrill in his voice.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Nick yelled back, cursing his vision as he tried to line up a shot on a moving target and run at the same time.

The Charger eventually stopped when it hit a small car, knocking it to one side. Terrence was howling in fear as the zombie lifted him up to bash him onto the snowy ground.

Nick approached at a flat sprint from behind, bringing the shotgun to bear. He fired as fast as the mechanism would allow, the buckshot spraying into the Charger's back. The zombie smashed Terrence to the ground once, and only once, before Nick killed it, and it collapsed in a groaning heap.

"Shit, kid, are you okay?" Nick slung the shotgun over his shoulder and hurried over, pushing the body of the Charger off of him.

Terrence was coughing. "I think so."

"Good." He offered the kid his hand. "That scared the shit out of me."

"You think _you_ were scared?" Terrence grunted as Nick helped him to his feet. "I haven't seen a Crasher in weeks. Almost forgot how strong they are."

"Crasher. Right."

They looked down at the body. Before, the zombies of this type had horribly mismatched arms, one of them large and the other small. Now the huge arm was all but twice the size of the zombie's torso, while the other was no more than a short, twisted nub.

"Jesus. They're still mutating," Nick said, prodding at the little arm with his gun.

"Ha. That hand looks so stupid," Terrence laughed.

"All right, that's enough. Let's keep moving."

Running had been a bad idea. Nick's leg was throbbing in pain. He ignored it, and tried not to limp, to avoid any looks or words from Terrence.

They climbed carefully into the open window of the store, where the smell of rotten corpses and dust met them.

"Whew, it stinks in here," Terrence complained, waving a hand in front of his nose.

Nick thought of a sewer, of a swamp, of a train full of bodies in a subway. "I've smelled worse," he said.

The store was in shambles. Random objects littered the floor. The registers had been broken open and lay in pieces all over the counter tops. Many of the shelves were toppled over, and bodies-both human and infected- lay in random positions all around.

"This might take a while," Terrence said. "Let's get started."

Keeping an ear open for the cries of zombies, Nick began picking through the mess. "This looks like it was a popular place when this whole thing started," he said.

The teenager was across the way, digging into a bargain bin full of clothes. "Almost as popular as the Wal-Mart," he answered, sniffing at a jacket before tossing it to the ground in disgust.

Nick pushed a shelf back to its original position to get at the objects underneath it. "I bet you could live your whole life in a Wal-Mart, without having to leave."

"I dunno. There's a whole lot of empty space in one of those stores. Lots of openings, too."

Under a pile of books, Nick found a small silver tool wrapped in heavy plastic. He straightened up. "Hey, I found a knife sharpener."

"You did?"

"I hope it'll work. It's one of those 'As Seen On TV' pieces of shit."

Terrence came over to put it in his backpack. "Well, that's one less thing we have to worry about finding."

"Still need an air horn," Nick said.

"I'm still not sure where it's going to come in handy," the teenager said, shrugging.

"It doesn't even have to _be_ an air horn. Just something that'll make a high-pitched sound."

Terrence scratched his neck. "But don't those kinds of noises attract the zombies?"

Nick smiled. "Exactly."

"Uh, I'm sorry, but since when did we _want _the zombies to come after us?"

"Not us," Nick said, stepping into an aisle.

"Then who?"

"Who else?" he jerked his head toward the door exit. "Those assholes with the assault rifles, that's who."

Awe came onto Terrence's face. "I... I never thought about using them that way, before."

"To be honest, neither have I. But hey, they're there, and we might as well take advantage of it, right?"

"You're one crazy dude," the teenager said. His voice was warm. "What goes on in that head of yours that makes you think about this stuff?"

Nick bent down to search beneath a collapsed table. "You don't want to know."

There were a pile of boards underneath the table with a jumble of ski poles, and he initially ignored them, thinking perhaps a shelf had also been broken down here. When he climbed back to his feet, he could see that the shelves were intact all around him.

Terrence moved past him, shuffling through the crap all over the floor.

Nick looked down at the table again.

"You coming?" the teenager asked. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Something's just... off."

"More zombies?"

"Not like that." Nick knelt back down and started pulling the boards out from underneath the table. When he tugged the last one out of the dust, he saw that part of the hardwood floor had been cut away, leaving a hollow cavity covered by a hinged door.

"Find something?"

Nick tilted his head and ran his fingers along the edge of the cover, eventually finding a padlock.

"I think so. Can you find a hammer or- never mind." He grabbed up one of the ski poles and jimmied the end of it into the padlock's metal loop. With a firm yank, he broke the lock open.

Terrence hunkered down next to him as he tossed the padlock away.

"Good eyes," the teenager said with a smile.

"Eye," Nick corrected, opening the door.

A pile of guns gleamed up at them through the dull light, surrounded by boxes of ammunition, bottles of water, cans of food and other random items.

"God, I love Republicans," Nick laughed, reaching down into the space. He pulled out the gun on top. It was a long, sleek gray rifle with a bolt action and heavy scope. "Hello, beautiful," he whispered, turning the gun over in his hands.

Terrence reached in and grabbed a similar weapon, made of heavy marbled wood. "They must have stored this stuff here and forgot about 'em. Or, y'know, _died._"

"Hmm," Nick hummed in agreement, running a finger down the gun's barrel, up over the scope. If there was such a thing as 'love at first sight' for guns, he believed he was experiencing it right now. _Steyr,_ were the words stamped into the metal support on the stock. He lifted the scope up to his good eye, looking down the length of the aisle.

"Any good?" Terrence asked, leaning down to pull out the rest of the things in the cavity.

"Yeah." Nick began to familiarize himself with the firearm. "I like it." The magazine had been extended, and when he was fiddling with the stock, it popped open and a second dropped out. "A lot."

"Can I see?"

He handed the gun over to the teenager, who ejected a round to study it. "Yeah, this is the same ammo," Terrence said, picking up one of the boxes. "Big-ass bullets."

"Better than the shotgun," Nick admitted, pulling the old weapon from his back. "I think I'll use this rifle for a while."

The teenager was loading the extra rounds into his backpack, along with the water and food. A pair of pistols with holsters were in the hideaway space; he took those, as well.

"Whew. This bag is getting heavy," the kid said, handing back the rifle. "Well, let's find an air horn. Or whatever."

Nick straightened up. The Steyr was a decent size. Weighty. Hopefully not prohibitively so. It fit well in his hands. He unfolded the stock, then found the safety catch and switched it off.

Terrence was standing next to him. "Bet you can't shoot that sale sign down." He pointed it out- it was posted against the far wall, bright red print against white plastic.

"How much are you betting?"

"A beer."

"Is that so?" Nick smirked and raised the scope to his good eye. "I hope you aren't lying. 'Cause I would really like to enjoy one before this shit goes down." He squeezed the trigger.

The rifle made a loud '_choof_' sound, almost like the sound of the shotgun.

Terrence laughed. "Good shot."

Nick lowered the gun. The sign was floating down the floor. "Don't let the eye fool you," he said. "I'm rather decent." He pulled back the bolt and ejected the spent round. Having to use it every time he fired was going to be a pain in the ass, but being able to aim was worth the trouble, he thought.

The teenager came over and slapped him jovially on the shoulder. He flinched.

"I'm glad I found you," the kid said, smiling.

Nick rolled his eyes. "You owe me a beer. Now let's go find a noisemaker."

* * *

It took a while, but Terrence did find something, underneath a pile of crushed boxes in the very back of the store. The device was about the size of a cell phone, with a single red button. On the plastic over-wrap, it said 'PERSONAL DETERRENT ALARM.' Terrence pulled it out and put the batteries in while Nick stood by, adjusting the scope of the Steyr as he gazed through it across the store.

When the batteries were placed in, he immediately pressed the 'ACTIVATE' button.

A loud, high-pitched squeal tore through the air, startling both of them- Nick about dropped his rifle and Terrence himself dropped the alarm.

"Turn it off, turn it off!" Nick shouted.

Terrence scrambled for it, pressing the button. It didn't stop.

"It won't _go _off!"

He scratched at the black case, opening the battery port and tugging them out.

The noise petered away, leaving their ears ringing.

Outside, the zombies were calling out their displeasure.

"God _damn_," Nick growled, rubbing at one of his ears.

Terrence lifted the old shotgun. "Well, at least this gives you practice with the new gun," he joked, turning toward the windows.

It was an easy fight. Nick picked them off from afar with precise, spaced shots. Terrence blew them away as they approached. The shotgun bucked back hard into his collarbone.

When it was over, Nick lowered the Steyr, allowing a slight smile to come to his face. "I _really_ like this gun," he stated, digging into Terrence's backpack for the extra rounds.

The teenager rolled his shoulder, wincing. "That shotgun's got a lot of kick."

"Yeah, it does."

"I bet you're used to it, though," Terrence thought out loud, scratching at the peach fuzz on his chin. "You seem to know your way around a rifle, that's for sure."

Nick glanced up from the magazine he was reloading. "I have to be. It's about the only gun I'm good with." He waved at the milky eye. "I miss half the time with everything else."

"It's cool." The teenager grinned. "Man, you're such a badass."

"Shut up."

"I mean it. I've met a lot of survivors out here, but I can say for sure I've only met one who's lost an eye and still kills a hell of a lot of zombies." He leaned back against a shelf, twisting the shotgun's strap. A serious expression came over his face. "I can only _wish_ to be that steadfast, you know?"

Nick didn't reply. He wasn't sure what to say.

"How do you do it?" Terrence asked. "Is there a trick to it?"

"What, to surviving?"

"Well, keeping yourself going when... when everything else has stopped."

"I don't know." Nick finished reloading the magazine and replaced it. "I don't really think about it."

Terrence cocked his head. "Maybe that's it, huh? Not worrying so much about stuff."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Should we head to the supply depot?"

"Uh-huh. Lead the way, kid."

* * *

The depot was once a library, now surrounded by high chain link fencing, barbed wire spirals at the top. The building itself was barricaded with concrete blocks, huge flat chunks pressed up against the windows and doors. A bunch of military Hummers lay parked inside the perimeter. High spotlights shined through the falling snow.

Earlier, the parking lot had been cleaned out; crumpled cars lay discarded in a nearby alley. Nick and Terrence crouched down beneath an upturned Ford truck and stared out at the depot.

"This is the closest I've ever been," the kid whispered into his ear, voice giddy and anxious. "Looks like they're pretty well set up over here."

Nick didn't break his gaze from the building. It was three stories tall. There were lights on in the top floor. The chain link wrapped around the entire library, with a heavy jury-rigged gate in the front. He looked down the street. A few squat houses on one side, an auto shop on the other.

"I don't see anyone," Terrence hissed.

"They're in there," Nick replied, shifting in the snow. "Nice and warm, I bet."

Terrence sucked in a thin breath. "There. Do you see him?"

A soldier was crossing the parking lot, assault rifle in hand. His uniform was gray and black. He spoke into his radio as he paced down the perimeter.

Nick shrank back under the truck, pushing Terrence behind him.

"I hope he didn't see us," the kid said.

"If he did, he'd be shooting us right now."

They couldn't hear anything. The snow seemed to absorb all the sound around them.

Nick was all but flattened underneath the truck, edging closer, trying to see what was going on.

The soldier came back around, pausing at the front gates and speaking into the radio again.

Terrence tugged at his shoulder, pulling him back into the hiding spot.

"They're gonna _see you_, come on."

For a minute, they stayed underneath the truck, Nick glancing out into the part of the street he could see. Terrence met his eyes, and he could see the panic there.  
"Let's go back," the teenager pleaded, voice never raising above a whisper. "Come on."

Nick watched the street for another minute before nodding.

The trek back was nerve-wracking, and neither of them spoke. Only when Terrence had stepped into the safe house and locked the metal door behind him did he relax, blowing out a huge chestful of breath through puffed, red cheeks.

"I never want to get that close to those guys again," he said.

Sean and Isaac rushed back to meet them, Rob trotting behind. When the dog saw Nick, he lifted his head and doubled his speed, jumping up to lick his face.

"I was only gone for a few hours. God," Nick grunted, pushing Rob away. The dog whined and leaned against his legs, tail a-blur, nails tapping on the floor.

"All he did was look around for you," Isaac said.

"How did it go?" Sean asked, taking the backpack from Terrence.

"Good enough. Got what we needed."

Nick pulled the rifle from his shoulder. Isaac was grinning at it.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked, reaching out to touch the stock.

"Sporting goods store. It was on sale." The survivor allowed the boy to take it, and even though it was quite heavy, he was able to lift it and look down the scope. "A hundred percent off."

Isaac laughed, Sean scoffed, and Terrence smiled.

Nick took the rifle back.

"Where's my beer, Terry?"

* * *

They sat around the rickety table and ate the largest meal any of them had enjoyed in weeks. For Nick, it had been months. There were actually _four courses_- canned vegetables, mashed potatoes from powder, macaroni and cheese, and chocolate pudding that Isaac had been saving.

Nick ate until he thought he was going to throw up, then leaned back in the wobbly chair and smiled at the feeling of warm food in his stomach. He was going to have some major cramps in the morning, but hopefully he wouldn't have time to worry about them.

Terrence came up next to him.

"Here." There was a green glass bottle of beer in his hand. "It's for you."

Nick took it, reading over the label. It wasn't a brand he'd ever heard of, but there was alcohol inside, and that was enough for him. He popped it open on the edge of the table as Terrence returned to his seat.

Sean and Isaac were only picking at their plates now, having swallowed as much as they could as fast as they could, finishing before anyone else.

"So," Terrence started, taking a bite of the potatoes, "tell me about your people."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "My people?"

"The ones that you're following. Where are they?"

"Maine," he said, rolling the bottle between his palms. "They're in Maine. I hope."

Sean looked over. "That's pretty far away, Nick."

"I know it is."

"How many are there?" Isaac asked.

"Two men, and a girl," Nick said.

"Ohhh, a _girl_," the eldest cooed, interest lighting up his face. "What's her name?"

"Rochelle."

The boys all looked at each other as if sharing an extremely amusing in-joke.

Isaac started, "Nick and Rochelle, sittin' in a tree..."

"_K-I-S-S-I-N-G,_" Sean joined in.

"Oh, shut the fuck up."

Terrence was laughing.

"First comes love..."

"I will shoot you in the face, I swear to God."

"Then comes marriage..."

"Can you see this? I'm going for my gun, Isaac."

"Then comes Rochelle with a baby carriage!"

Nick scowled at them, sulking in his seat. "It's not like that at all. She..."

Terrence shook his head, pimpled cheeks red with mirth. "We all know how it goes. You meet over zombie brains, go on a few dates, you take her home with you..."

"...She gives you a back massage..." Isaac continued.

Nick scoffed. "That's what you think adults do when they're alone?"

The youngest tilted his head. "Well, what else would they do?"

Sean put his face in his hands, hiding his laughter.

"Well, Isaac, when a man and a woman love each other very much..." Terrence began, steepling his hands on his chin like a wise old professor, "they share a special _hug_ and..."

"Are you for real?" Nick laughed, taking another drink. "That's bullshit, Terry, don't tell him things like that."

Isaac looked between the two of them, confusion twisting his features. "I don't understand."

Nick leaned forward, catching the young boy's eyes. "Say you meet a girl, all right? You like her. Or not. That part doesn't really matter. Well, if she's hot, that matters. Maybe not anymore. Whatever." He waved his hand in the air. "Anyway, you take her home. She takes your clothes off. You take her clothes off-"

"That is _gross_," Isaac interrupted.

"In a few years, it's all you're ever going to think about," Nick said, and continued, "so you've got her alone. She's kissing you, you're kissing her, it's all very messy and unsanitary. You lay her down on the bed-"

"_Ooo-_kay, that's enough for me," Sean said, getting up from the table to leave. "Thanks for the study, Nick."

Terrence and Isaac continued to stare at him, expectant.

After finishing his drink, Nick told them the rest.

"That is so disgusting," Isaac said afterward. "Are you sure it's supposed to work that way?"

"Absolutely."

Terrence leaned close to the boy. "That's how babies are made," he told him, _sotto voce_.

"_That's_ how it works?"

Nick choked on a laugh. "What, you still believe in the stork or some shit?"

"I don't know what to believe anymore!" Isaac shouted, throwing his hands in the air. "I'm going to bed."

"Oh, could you imagine?" Terrence asked, after the youngest had left, "A stork that brings zombies!"

"Yeah, because it's not a virus or anything. It's _magic_."

"I've read Harry Potter," the teenager said, looking vaguely thoughtful. "Maybe it's just a bunch of crazy wizards screwing us over."

"You know, apart from all the other shit I've seen," Nick got up from his chair, "I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was the case. I'm gonna try and sleep before tomorrow. Lots to be done."

Terrence smiled. "Goodnight, Nick."

"Yeah, yeah."

* * *

He lay for hours staring into the dark, running over the plan in his mind again and again.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, they were leaving D.C.

His dreams were full of kind faces and whirling snow.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Kit, my beta-reader, inspiration, and friend. Thank you so much for all you do. There wouldn't be a Two Step without you; I hope you know that._

_As far as the story itself goes, I hope all you readers are enjoying it. We've come pretty far already from a shoreline in North Carolina, eh?_

_Coming up next: The Saboteur. A plan put into motion.)  
_


	14. The Saboteur

Nick got an early start, rising before any of the others. He collected all of the things he would need, throwing them into the backpack. The only weapon he took was a pistol, strapped to his thigh. He wouldn't need anything else, and the new rifle would be nothing but a hindrance.

Predawn light came in through the boards over the windows. Dust motes floated through the air as Nick paced all through the safe house, checking over the map again, his mind turning his thoughts over and over. Rob followed him everywhere, bumping Nick's hands when he was still and trotting exuberantly behind him when he wasn't.

"Morning," Terrence's tired voice called out as he was leaning over the map for the dozenth time. "So today's the big day, huh? You're really gonna do it."

"Pack your shit," Nick said. "When I get back, we're gonna have to leave in a hurry."

"We can do that."

"We're traveling light. Take only what you need. Food and water's the most important."

"Okay."

The teenager came up next to him. Together they stared at the map, the pen-marks scratched in by Nick, the crayon places colored by the boys.

"Thank you," Terrence said, after a clear bit of hesitation.

Nick didn't look at him. "For what?"

"Helping us."

"Kid..." he sighed, running a hand down his face. "It's for me, too. When this is over, you'll all just be tagging along."

"Right."

Nick turned and looked Terrence in the eye. He thought for a second, and then, "If I don't come back, you three need to leave. Take Rob with you. Go to the subway tunnels, there's zombies down there but you'll be fine-"

"But I-"

"Take the Red Line south," Nick kept going. "Switch to the Yellow Line. Keep moving _south_, do you understand me?"

Terrence nodded quickly. "Yes, I understand." His eyes were wet.

"The roads are clear out of Arlington. That's the way I came. You three need to find a spot to live, and stay there. Don't ever come back into this city, okay?"

"I... I won't."

Nick put a hand on the kid's shoulder. "If I'm not back by nightfall, I'm not going to come back at all. That's when you leave." He shook him gently for emphasis. "Don't screw this up. You're all those other two have."

"I know."

"Good. Take care of my dog, okay?"

Terrence nodded again, swiping at his eyes with the back of a hand.

"Stop crying. Jesus. I don't even like you."

The teenager let out a gurgled laugh, head bobbing reflexively.

Nick went to the bag of dog food, pulling out a bowl of kibble to offer to Rob. He knelt down next to him and ran his hands through the rough fur of his back, gently untangling some of the knots with his fingers. Rob wagged his tail, concentrating on the food.

"I'm gonna be gone a while, all right? If I don't come back, you stay with these guys. They'll take good care of you." He twisted the dog's ears. "Better than I would have," he finished, quietly.

Nick straightened up, giving Rob a last pat on the head.

The dog ignored him, still focused on the kibble in the bowl.

"Good boy, Rob. You stay here, now."

He left him and Terrence in the lounge, and the door clicked quietly shut behind him.

Sean and Isaac were still sleeping. He passed them without disturbance, and slipped out into the snow-covered street outside.

Nick squared his shoulders, squinting in the bright light of the rising sun. Remembering the path they'd taken to the depot, he set off.

* * *

It had begun to snow again as Nick approached, and the early morning's light had cast a gray pall over everything. The footprints they'd left yesterday were still here. Nick followed them until the final turn came near, and then he went in another direction. He crept toward the tire store from the east, keeping other buildings between him and the depot.

The store was mostly intact. Nick entered through one of the garage doors that had been wrenched partially open, ducking down and slipping inside. The smell of rubber and oil met his nose, a strange scent to a man who was used to a wet dog, to decomposing flesh, to gunpowder.

He passed into the wide open garage, passing underneath an old sedan still hitched up on the pneumatic risers. There were tools along all of the walls, and tires stacked up with sale signs hanging from them. Nick hadn't seen such a clean floor in weeks. It was polished to a sheen; he could see the fuzzy reflection of himself, bedraggled and desperate.

Cracking his neck, he looked away from his reflection and kept moving. His wet boots found carpet, and then he entered the office area, all of which seemed relatively untouched. The computers were still sitting on the desks, covered in dust. Sale papers and auto books were stacked up all over.

Nick approached the window closest to the depot in a crouch, keeping himself against the wall. He peered over the sill, staying low to the ground.

The spotlights were on, pointing down into the parking lot. Seven military Hummers were parked in the snow. Inside the library building, he could see lamp-light and movement.

He tugged the backpack off and opened it up. The knife he pulled out and stuck in his back pocket, and the wire cutters he kept in his hand. Nick pulled the backpack back on, then straightened slowly and unlatched the window lock.

The window complained as he opened it, squealing loudly in the quiet. Nick stopped, crouched back down, and waited. Had they heard it? He watched the depot, standing in the whirling snow, but nothing happened.

Again, he stood up, tugging the window open. The screen was gone, which was nothing but an advantage for him. He climbed out and dropped down into the snow, immediately glad of the gloves and hat Terrence had given him.

Every step jerking sporadically with nerves, Nick crossed the space between the two buildings. He expected gunfire and shouts at any time, but the silence persevered, and he pressed forward. After it felt to him like he'd gone across a football field full of land mines, he reached the chain link fence. Right on the other side sat one of the Hummers. He could almost reach out and touch it.

Nick brought up the wire cutters and began. Each part of the fence made a loud clicking sound as he snapped it, but he worked as quickly as his hands would move, knowing that at any time a soldier could come around that Hummer, see him, and open fire.

_Click, click, click._

Somewhere he heard a door squeak open, and then close.

_Click, click, click._

Voices, muffled, but calm. Nick glanced around as he made the last cut, then pulled away the section of fence he'd broken apart.

He let out a deep breath. It fogged around his face.

_Can't turn back now_, he thought, and he climbed into the perimeter. As he entered, he felt the same kind of feeling he'd gotten when he'd first begun to follow Gregory, the same feeling when he'd crossed that table bridge. It clutched at his insides with hands colder than any winter.

Fear. Simple but powerful.

Nick couldn't hesitate. He moved forward, crawling underneath the Hummer. Above him curled wires and pipes and all sorts of machinery he didn't recognize.

One of them, however, he _was _familiar with.

He slid himself along the ground to the underside of the engine compartment. The vehicle was cold, and he didn't even know if it would run or not.  
If he didn't assume it did, it would be a mistake, and he'd made enough of those already.

Nick pulled out the knife and lifted himself up toward the engine. Most of the parts he couldn't see, but he ran his fingers up and around them, eventually finding the long, thick belt that was wrapped around and between much of the compartment.

With the knife, he sawed away at the belt until it was severed.

He sank back down to the ground, and stared out to his right, at the next closest Hummer.

_One of six_, he thought. _You can do this._

There were voices again, but they were near the library. Mumbling in soft tones. Nick hadn't alerted them yet. It wouldn't be long before he did, though. Not long at all.

Clamping the knife between his teeth, Nick lay flat on his belly and crawled to the next Hummer. He rolled onto his back when he got underneath it, found the serpentine belt, and sliced it, just like the last.

His clothes were already soaked through, and his body was trembling from a potent mixture of the cold and adrenaline and fear. It only made him move faster, and he got underneath the third Hummer and destroyed it within minutes.

There were four left. From where he lay flat on the ground, one was between him and the building, with the other three on the opposite side of the parking lot. Getting across without being noticed didn't look like an easy task.

Nick moved on to the fourth. He was dangerously close to the library, but the bottom floor windows had been boarded up with concrete, and the higher ones couldn't see him from their angle. What worried him were the voices, so close he could hear their conversation now. _They're on the stoop_, he thought.

"Yeah, I guess the new model actually fired grenades."

"I would love to use that on some of those Whiskeys. Kaboom! Hahaha!"

Nick reached up and began cutting away at the belt.

His wet gloves made his grip on the handle slip, and the blade clanged down hard onto another part of the engine. The knife came out of his hand and into the snow. Nick froze.

But the voices were still talking.

"Sixteen at once the other day. Used one of those pipe-bombs Charlie tends to pick up."

"How'd it work?"

"Better than I thought."

Nick found the knife, pulled the glove off with his teeth to get a better hold, and started again.

"Those carriers are _smart_, man."

"Did you know that some of the scientists really think they are part Whiskey? Losing their minds and stuff."

"Scientists are idiots."

With gentle, timed movements, he sawed the belt apart. Oil was dripping down onto his face; he must have punctured a tank when the knife slipped. He stopped and looked at it.

"That's what I'm saying. Like those ones in Chillum? Took out two of our Mall boys a while back."

A thought came to his head. Nick pulled off the backpack and pulled the zipper open gingerly. At the bottom was a Bic lighter.

"They've got a sniper or something. Nobody's been able to find their little hidey-hole."

Nick glanced up at the leaking tank, rolling the lighter between his hands to warm it. He looked back toward the library again, then flicked it on.

"I'm not surprised. They don't want to be found."

"You wanna hear a rumor?"

He cupped his other hand around the flame, and lifted it to the tank.

"What's that?"

"I heard they're just kids."

Fire touched oil, and the whole thing erupted. Nick dropped down, grabbed the backpack, and ran.

"Holy shit, do you see that?"

He got to the furthest Hummer, swung a hard right, and booked it across the lot, hoping that the two would get distracted with the fire and not see him.

Luck seemed to be on his side this time, and he scrambled underneath the fifth Hummer without being seen. The pair at the building were yelling their heads off.

The clock was ticking, ticking, ticking.

Nick bypassed the fifth Hummer and went to the sixth, slicing the belt. When he finished the seventh, the last, he threw the knife down on the ground and turned back.

The vehicle he'd skipped was unlocked. Nick almost laughed at the stupidity and opened it, climbing inside. There were no keys in the ignition. He was prepared for it.

An alarm began to blare in the library.

Nick grabbed up the two screwdrivers and began stabbing away at the ignition control. Either these Hummers had not been military-grade to start with, or they had been poorly manufactured, because he popped the control off in seconds, and severed it with the wire cutters.

He glanced back to the building. More soldiers were coming out.

His hands were unsteady as he stuck the longest screwdriver into the hollow ignition port, prodding and pushing until _finally_, the engine snarled to life in front of him.

Gunfire came at him immediately. A lot of shouting.

Nick grabbed at the clutch- God, it had been a long time since he drove stick- and slammed his boot into the accelerator. The Hummer leapt forward through the snow, kicking it up everywhere. He drove right through the chain link perimeter, knocking part of it down while another chunk got stuck underneath the chassis. Something shattered in the back, but he paid it no mind. He accelerated.

_Yes!_ his mind screamed. _Fuck yes!_

He shot down the road, glancing at the rear-view mirror. The Hummer he'd set on fire was a full-on inferno now, and he could see some soldiers piling into one to follow him.

"Well,_ that_ ain't gonna work," Nick said.

They managed to get about a block before coming to a complete standstill, smoke pouring from the engine compartment.

Nick kept going, sliding around a corner. The safe house wasn't too far. He just had to remember the streets from the map, not the shortcuts he'd taken to get here.

The Hummer was powerful. After a few minutes the half of a fence broke free from underneath the frame, got kicked up by one of the rear tires, and went spinning crazily into the street. Nick felt a grin coming onto his face. God damn, he was actually going to make it!

It worked. His plan had worked. Something he'd attempted had actually gone how it was supposed to, no gunshot wounds or dead kids or hurt Rob. He wasn't out of the Capital yet, but hell if he hadn't made a good running start.

He reached the safe house and braked, honking the horn at a rapid staccato.

Terrence's face appeared in the door. His eyes went wide.

Nick climbed out of the driver's side. "Get your shit! We gotta go!"

It took the boys all of five minutes to grab everything and pile it into the back of the vehicle. Isaac carried trash bags full of clothes and blankets, Sean loaded cardboard boxes full of food, the dog kibble.

Rob jumped up into the passenger seat.

"Hey! I want shotgun!" Terrence cried, tossing a bag of ammunition inside.

"Seniority rules," Nick grunted. "I'm in a hurry, come on."

"I got your bag," Isaac called, struggling with the weight of it. Nick came and grabbed it from him, throwing it into the Hummer.

"Is that it?" he asked, looking back into the safe house.

"I think so. Medicine, first aid, food, water..." Sean was listing things off breathlessly.

"Good enough. We can salvage other stuff later. Get in," Nick ordered, climbing behind the wheel.

Rob looked at him and wagged his tail. He shifted the clutch and started off down the road.

"Seat belts, everyone," Terrence said after a minute.

"Fuck that," Nick laughed. "I'm not crashing this thing."

"But it's _important._"

"My hands are busy right now, sorry."

Terrence crawled up behind him and pulled the seat belt over his chest. Nick wanted to glare but settled on growling with irritation while keeping his eye on the road.

"This is a _nice car_," Sean commented, patting the seat underneath him. "Hate the color, though."

"At least it isn't Pepto-Bismol pink," was Isaac's quiet input.

"Kid, I would still drive this thing even if it was covered in rainbows and unicorn stickers."

They slid around a corner. The boys shrieked with laughter. Nick gunned the engine; the Hummer jumped forward and tore down the streets as if the snow wasn't even there.

The barricade was a long ways off, but there was still time to prepare.

"Terry," Nick said, tossing his backpack into the rear of the vehicle, "get that alarm out, roll down the window."

"Okay," he said. There was doubt in his voice.

"Turn it on and stick it out there. I want to alert every fuckin' zombie in the Capital if we can."

Sean looked at him in the rear-view mirror with terrified eyes. "Are you crazy?"

"Yes, I am," Nick said factually, turning another corner. The tires screamed.

The alarm came on, just as loud and blaring as it was before. Terrence rolled the window down and leaned out, waving it in the icy air.  
"Come on, zombies!" His voice could barely be heard past the noise. "Come and get it!"

One was standing right in the road. Nick plowed into it without thinking.

"Jeez, this car is _awesome_," Sean shouted over the alarm.

They were coming upon the barricade.

"When we break through," Nick hollered back to the teenager, "drop that alarm right in the street, got it?"

He saw Terrence nod his confirmation.

Nick pulled the Hummer around the last corner. There it stood, the barricade, on the highway exit out of the city. Concrete on either side. Tall reinforced chain link served as the gate. Military trucks sat around it, and there was a guard tower. He had enough time to think, _Is that a machine gun up there?_ and by then, it was firing at them.

He swerved, trying for a zig-zag pattern, but the Hummer was simply too big for the narrow street. All three of the boys were screaming, ducking their heads down. Bullets sprayed over the roof as a heavy rain.

"Here come the zombies," Terrence warned.

In the rear-view mirror, he could see a big-ass group of them racing after their vehicle.

As he'd hoped, the gunner on the tower began firing on the zombies, instead.

The gate came closer and closer.

Nick gunned the engine. The Hummer roared.

"Come on, come on!" he shouted.

He didn't know if the vehicle was powerful enough to break through the gate, or if the gate was electrified, or if the military had mines or tire-destroying wire strips set up on the other side.

There was no time to think about it.

With a crunching, scraping noise, the Hummer crashed into the gate. For a half-second, Nick thought it was going to get stuck, but then the gate came up and over their vehicle, twisted by the collision, falling back to the ground.

The Hummer tore forward.

They were free.

"Drop the alarm! Drop it now!" Nick screamed.

Terrence threw it. The zombies- those who weren't getting torn to shreds by the machine gun- converged on it, and also upon the military personnel that had come out to stop them.

Sean was howling with laughter. "Oh my God," he repeated, voice high with exhilaration. Isaac was hugging him, face red and streaming tears, bouncing in his seat, shrieking with wordless joy.

They were out. They were out.

_They'd done it._

Terrence caught Nick's eye in the rear-view mirror. His young face was glowing with admiration.

"Good job, old man," he said, and he was smiling.

"We're all even now," was all Nick could reply with.

The Hummer blasted down the highway until D.C. was far, far behind them.

God.

He loved cars.

* * *

_(A/N: This chapter was actually a bit short compared to the others. Sorry about that._

_Thanks to Kit, my beta-reader, whom I am quite worried about as I post this chapter. Be safe, sister._

_No update next week. [Actually, I might just stick to the 'every-other-week' update schedule that I have been using.]_

_Coming up: The Mentor. In which Nick inadvertently digs himself a deeper hole.)  
_


	15. The Mentor

God, he hated cars.

"Ew. Nick, Rob farted."

"Whatever, Terry, don't blame it on Nick's dog."

"Whoever smelt it, dealt it," Isaac put in.

Nick glared at the rear-view mirror. All three boys were in the back, shoving each other, complaining, being general pains in the ass. Rob sat in the front passenger seat and panted.

"Sit down," Nick barked, and they instantly complied. "Knock that shit off. I'm trying to drive."

"Yeah, you don't need any more distractions, you blind bastard," Sean laughed.

"I will _turn this car around_."

"No, you won't." Sean was grinning. He just loved to push his buttons.

But his words were true. The only thing that would get Nick to travel south ever again would be the chance that perhaps Coach and the others were down there.

God, he hoped not. Thinking about them getting caught or killed by the military made that cold hand of worry clutch at his gut again. He was lucky. He'd only been _shot_.

Nick kept his eye on the road. _These kids are going to love Ellis_, he thought.

Terrence leaned over and smacked Sean in the back of the head. Isaac was sitting between them, and he raised his arms to protect himself as the other two went at it again, slapping and punching at each other's faces and shoulders.

"I'm about three seconds from kicking you out of this fucking car," Nick snapped, glancing at them in the rear-view.

"He started it," Terrence grunted, placing an open-palmed slap right on Sean's face.

"Ow! You douche!"

Isaac wailed between them.

Nick stomped his foot down on the brake, throwing Rob into the dashboard. The Hummer fishtailed as it came to a stop on the empty highway.

"What the hell, Nick!"

He turned in the seat and glared at them.

"Do you think I'm kidding? I'll dump you right here. All three of you."

Sean's expression showed terror, but his voice was defiant. "Yeah, right."

Nick narrowed his eyes. "Get out."

"No."

"Get out of my car. Right now."

Sean began to frown. "But I-"

"_Out_."

Isaac began to cry.

Terrence shook his head. "Hey, now, Nick-"

"You want to join him? Shut _the fuck _up."

Sean opened the door and climbed out, slamming it shut behind him.

Nick shifted into drive and started off.

"What are you doing?" Terrence cried. "Are you seriously going to leave him there?"

"No, I'm not."

"Then why-"

"_Shut up_."

He drove forward, no more than fifty feet, and then stopped and honked the horn.

Sean came running up, cheeks red, puffing.

When he was a few feet from reaching them, Nick accelerated forward.

"You _dick_!" Sean screamed, sprinting through the snow after the vehicle. "_Asshole_!"

Eventually, Nick allowed him back into the Hummer.

Sean was compliant for the rest of the day.

* * *

The stolen vehicle was their home base that night. Nick brought it into a fire station and parked, shutting it off. The boys piled out all at once, Rob dashing out after them.

Nick sat on the hood and worked at a can of beans while the three kids ran all over the garage, climbing up onto the catwalks, digging into everything, making an awful racket. What interested them the most was the fire truck, bright red and massive, sitting next to the Hummer. Sean broke into it and they took turns pretending to drive and honking the horn.

There weren't any zombies, at least- he was sure they'd attract every one of them with the noise they were making, but nothing came. It may have gotten too cold for them, even though they were still in Maryland.

"Hey Nick! Watch this!"

He scooped a spoonful of beans out and looked at Terrence with a disinterested gaze.

The teenager was up on the higher floor, waving at him. A metal pole had been built up here for quicker access to the bottom. Nick tilted his head. He thought that firemen actually using the pole was just an old stereotype.

Terrence howled, Tarzan-like, as he twisted down it. When he was almost at the end, the traction of his boots on the pole stopped him up, and he fell down onto his ass with a stunned yelp.

Nick coughed to conceal his laugh. "You're an idiot."

"Owww. My _butt_," the teenager whined, limping dramatically over to him. "Nick. Nick, share your beans with me. I'm crippled now."

"Yeah, and so am I. Get your own."

Terrence scrambled up onto the hood with him. "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were a huge jerk."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Because I _am _a huge jerk."

The kid punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Yeah, right. Are you going to share?"

With a sigh, the survivor handed over the can and spoon, then lay back on the still-warm hood of the Hummer and stared up at the ceiling. Terrence chewed quietly on the food and sat next to him.

Isaac was wrestling with Rob down on the concrete floor. The dog bonked his head into the boy's and made feigned growls, pawing gently at his legs and rolling about like a puppy.

Sean was inside the fire truck, making obnoxious mock-driving noises.

Nick shut his eyes, smiling at the warmth against his back. He'd shoot himself in the foot before admitting that the feeling of happiness had been caused by anything else.

* * *

In the middle of the night, a soft sound woke him up. The driver's seat had been reclined and that was where he'd slept, underneath a blanket with his face tucked down into his arms to shield it from the cold.

Nick looked around blearily. Moonlight came in through the high windows of the fire station. All was silent, save for the noise that came again.

Someone was crying.

He raised himself up on one elbow, looking behind him. Isaac was curled up tightly into the backseat, face hidden in blanket. His entire body was shaking with sobs.

Nick reached out carefully and touched his shoulder. The boy jumped, yanking his head out of the blanket. His hair was all over the place, his eyes were red and his cheeks were soaked.

"Easy. What's wrong?" Nick asked in a whisper.

Isaac hiccuped, pawing at his eyes. "I didn't m-mean to w-w-wake you up."

"It's okay." He shifted a little closer, looking over at where Terrence was sleeping, in the passenger seat. Sean was down on the floor with Rob, in the back. "What's the problem, Isaac?"

"I-I-I dreamed about m-my mom," the boy said, hiding his face again. "W-w-what if she was still... still in D.C.?"

"_That's_ what you're worried about?" Nick sighed and rubbed some of the sleep out of his good eye. "If she's anything like you, then she's just fine. Don't sweat about it."

It was a lie, and the little boy probably knew that.

He nodded anyway, swiping more tears from his face.

"Go back to sleep," Nick said.

Isaac nodded again, and then asked tentatively, "You aren't going to leave us, right, Nick?"

He pressed his lips together. "No. I'm not."

"I'm scared of-of-of having to do this w-without you."

Nick sighed. "I might die tomorrow. We all might. You have to learn to be strong on your own, okay? I'm not always gonna be here."

The boy's head bobbed again. He pulled the blanket tighter around him.

"I love you, Nick." Isaac's voice was tiny, like a radio turned down.

He didn't answer. He couldn't answer. Nick curled back up on the driver's seat, huddling under the blanket. Twisting his fingers into his hair, he stared into the shadowy warmth made by the cover over his head and tried his hardest not to think.

It didn't work.

* * *

Nick was up late in the morning. The boys had allowed him to sleep until he slowly woke on his own, turning over and blinking in the cold light coming through the windshield. Someone had given him another blanket.

Terrence was in the back. "Hey there, sleeping beauty."

He grunted incomprehensibly.

"I didn't understand a word you just said."

Nick cleared his throat and forced his body into a sitting position. "I asked what time it was."

"Well, the dashboard clock says nine-thirty."

"Why did I sleep so late?" He stretched his arms out.

"Sean wanted you to."

Nick stumbled out of the Hummer. The other two boys were sitting on the concrete, playing checkers.

"Hi, Nick," Isaac said. His eyes were bright, clear. If Nick didn't know any better, he would have thought that seeing him crying just hours before had only been a dream.

"Look what we found in the storage closet." Sean pointed at the red-and-black playing board.

"Amazing," Nick grunted, and fumbled to the bathroom. There was no power and no running water. It was expected. He avoided the mirror, afraid to look at himself and see that derelict face again.

Rob found him when he went back into the garage, exuberant as ever. How old was the dog, anyway? He acted like a pup half the time, at least when he was around the kids.

"We ought to get moving." Nick shook the last bit of sleepy pins-and-needles from his leg and went for the driver's side door.

Terrence was sitting there already.

"I'm driving today," he declared, puffing his chest out.

Nick stared. "Um, what."

"I have a license."

"Don't lie to me."

"It's true. A zombie ate it."

Sean was putting the checkers board away. "Don't worry, he can drive." There was an underlying chuckle to his tone that made the truth painfully obvious.

Terrence gave him a huge grin. "Trust me," he said, giving a thumbs-up.

Nick went around to the passenger side. "If you fuck this up," he climbed in and fastened his seat belt, "I am going to break your nose."

"You know, you keep saying things like that." Terrence started the Hummer. "But I've yet to see you actually do anything."

"I _did_ punch you in the face once."

"You were unconscious. Doesn't count."

Sean brought the checkers board with them. Isaac ushered Rob into the backseat and shut the doors.

Nick rested his arms on the dashboard. "But I _did_ _it_."

"Aw, I don't blame you at all. We were hacking at your leg and digging a bullet out of it. I'm surprised you didn't strangle anyone." Terrence put the vehicle into drive.

It humped forward, clutch groaning.

Nick pressed his face into his hands. "Have you ever driven stick?"

"Once," Terrence said.

"Jesus Christ."

"Don't worry, I'm a fast learner."

He clipped the side of the garage door on the way out.

"Whoopsie-daisy."

"I hate you so much, Terrence."

* * *

The first forty-five minutes were pure hell. It would go like this:

"Don't hit that car."

"I won't, don't worry."

_Crunch_.

Nick would yell. Terrence would come up with an excuse, each new one more extravagant than the last. Sean would laugh and Isaac would squeal in fear.

Then the sequence would repeat itself, with slight differences in that Terrence would be about to hit not just cars, but phone poles and trees and mailboxes.

But the teenager hadn't lied; he picked up on things quickly, and by the end of the first hour he could actually avoid other cars, and switch gears without the clutch making that horrible scraping noise.

The easy drive didn't last long. As they entered a small town covered in a light layer of snow, the Hummer began coughing. At an intersection, the engine gave out, and it rolled to a complete stop.

Nick leaned back in the seat. "Must be out of gas," he said.

"Yeah." Terrence tapped the gauge in front of him.

"What now?" Isaac's nervous voice whispered.

There were zombies shuffling about in the thin snow. A few had seen them, and were beginning to make their way over.

"First things first, I guess," Nick said, opening the passenger door. He went around to the back of the Hummer, opening it up. The Steyr lay waiting for him, wrapped in a checker-print bedsheet. Terrence came over and grabbed the shotgun.

"Hey, Nick," Isaac spoke up, grabbing his scoped hunting rifle. "I bet I can explode more heads than you."

"You wish."

With four people wielding four guns, it did not take very long for them to clear the immediate area. The youngest boy was really an amazing sharpshooter, taking them out at distances Nick wouldn't even attempt. Sean wielded an assault rifle- one of the models that the military had been using in D.C.- spraying bullets in short bursts at the zombies that got too close. Rob would only intervene when the zombies were so near that firing at them would be too dangerous.

They made a good team.

When the zombies had been cut down to a group in the single digits, Nick heard the sound of a Smoker. It was somewhere out there in the gray town. He swung the Steyr around, looking through the scope, calling out at the same time. "There's a Smo- a Tongue-guy nearby."

It felt like he was back in the South, with teammates he could rely on.

Isaac was behind him, and he could feel the kid's bony shoulders coming just to his middle back. "I'll find it," he spoke, voice loud, louder than Nick had ever heard.

The trademark slurping sound reached his ears and Sean let out a shout as he was snatched.

Nick whirled, seeing the tongue first, scoping it quickly to the body-

A _second_ tongue appeared, and he had time to see it coming through his gun sight before it wrapped itself tightly around his neck and shoulder, throwing him bodily to the snow.

"What the _fuck_," he cried, thinking that there might have been two of them. He twisted about as the Smoker began dragging him across the road. Rob was bounding after him, hackles raised and big eyes afraid.

Then he noticed Isaac kneel, fire twice in their direction, and then the tongue around his body loosened and fell away. At the same time, Sean let out an affirmating sound that hopefully meant he was all right.

Nick got to his feet- Rob was right next to him with a worried whimper- and retrieved his Steyr. Relief filled him when he found it wasn't broken.

"Holy crap, you guys. Look at this," Sean called out. He was still yanking the tongue off of one of his arms.

The body of the Smoker lay in the snow. It was disgusting to look at, and it smelled horrible. They'd always had some sort of growth coming out of their faces and parts of their chests; now the bumps had spread all down the torso to the groin. A dozen tongues were growing out of its skull and shoulders.

"Two of us. It grabbed two of us at once," Nick said, rubbing at the spot where the tongue had constricted over his throat. "Jesus."

"Remember how you said they were still mutating?" Terrence came up and stood next to him, pausing to pick off a stray zombie. "I guess you were right."

"I don't _want _to be right. I'm _tired _of being right," Nick muttered, pulling back the bolt on his rifle.

"Maybe you should start talking about finding a lot of food and gasoline," Isaac whispered while reloading.

Sean scoffed and turned to look down the intersection.

Nick glanced about. The area around them looked pretty clear.

"I guess we should find a gas station," he said, shouldering the Steyr.

"How are we supposed to get it out?" Sean questioned. "It doesn't look like there's power here. Those pumps run on electricity, don't they?"

"Then find some cars," Nick suggested, turning to them. "And a garden hose."

"A _garden hose_?" Terrence echoed with a bewildered look, "for _what_?"

"Are you ever gonna stop questioning and just start listening, Terry?"

* * *

"Over here! I got one!"

Sean came jogging to them with the stiff hose looped over his shoulder. "Will this work?"

Nick took it from him. Water hadn't frozen inside of it. "Yeah. Good job." He put it down on the ground and held out a hand to Terrence. "Let me use your knife."

The teenager handed it over, and he began cutting at the hose.

"What we ought to be doing," he began, measuring out a three-foot span with his eye, "is getting a different car altogether. Military's gonna be looking for that Hummer."

"Do you think they're in other places besides D.C.?" Isaac asked, beginning to look worried.

"I wouldn't bet against it." Nick stood up, twisting the now shortened hose around in his hands. He handed Terrence back his knife. "Now we need a container and a car."

* * *

It was a trick he'd learned from Ellis, back when they were in Georgia with their stolen racecar. The young man had smiled jauntily at him from under his hat and said, _Wanna learn somethin' new, Nick?_ Then he would thread the piece of hose into the gas tank and suck at the other end until the fuel came out. Gravity made it pour out of the victimized tanks and into their own red can.

Now, months later, his position was reversed: he was teaching three boys how to siphon gasoline from car tanks with a garden hose and an empty milk jug.

The only problem was that Nick got more than a few mouthfuls of fuel sloshing around in his mouth. It was oily and made his gums tingle. Probably rather unhealthy for him, but whatever. Gasoline was more important than whether or not his sense of taste worked anymore- not that it mattered. Any sort of refined palate Nick used to have before _this_ had been stripped away, like a lot of other things.

At least he'd learned a couple more tricks to balance it all out, he thought.

They were on the third car now. Nick was crouched by the tank. He sucked at the hose until the gas started coming out, then stuck it into the jug, spitting the fuel out of his mouth. It was getting tougher to suppress his gag reflex.

"Your turn next," he said to Terrence, who sat on top of the car above him. "God, this tastes awful."

"I bet." The teenager's face was twisted in secondhand disgust. "Are you sure we don't have enough yet?"

Nick swirled the milk jug. It was about half-full. "Pickings are slim around here," he said, waiting for the hose to stop pouring. Rob was rolling around in the snow on the adjacent sidewalk.

Isaac was wandering around nearby, hitting the sides of the cars in hope that he could hear how full the gas tanks were- another thing that Nick had learned from his old friend, and passed on to them.

He hoped Ellis was still alive, so he could tell him about this.

Sean stood next to a nearby stop sign, the shotgun hanging from his hands. He bumped it against his knees, whistling in boredom.

"Maybe it should be _your_ turn next," Nick called to him.

"I'm not putting my lips anywhere that yours have been," Sean replied, without looking over.

"Sucks to be you. 'Cause you're doing it anyway."

When it came to be his turn, Nick talked him through it while he sucked at the hose awkwardly.

"Keep going. 'Till you taste it. Then you just-"

Very suddenly, Sean pulled away. Gasoline came out of his mouth and nose and spilled all over the ground; Nick grabbed the end of the hose and pushed it quickly into the jug.

"Ugh- _ugh_- I _swallowed _it!"

Sean gagged and vomited on the sidewalk.

"You're such an asshole, Nick," he moaned between retches. "I can't believe you made me do that."

"Oh, stop being a baby," the survivor said to him. "Good thing you puked, though. I'm sure it's not healthy for you."

"Thanks for caring about my well-being, you prick."

When they had filled the gallon jug and poured it carefully into the tank of the Hummer, they went back out for more. Sean refused to try again, and kept shoving snow into his mouth until it melted, swishing vigorously, and spitting it back out.

"Gasoline is oil-based," Nick said as he supervised Terrence siphoning from a Dodge van. "Water isn't going to rinse it out, you know."

"I don't care," Sean groaned. "This taste is never going to get off my tongue."

"Try not to smoke a cigarette or anything. You might roast that tiny brain of yours."

Isaac was sitting on a curb next to Rob. He laughed.

Sean spit again. "I hate you, Nick. I really do."

* * *

They hadn't collected enough gas to fill the tank of the Hummer until mid-afternoon.

Nick demanded to drive this time. Gasoline fumes filled the cab; they all smelled like it.

"Maybe we should stay the night somewhere, start again in the morning," Terrence suggested, leaning against a cracked window for fresh air.

Nobody spoke up to argue.

The Hummer was coasting through a suburban area, lined with buildings. Every single house had been pillaged, broken into. Not a single pane of glass had been left unshattered. Some of them had been burned, and were simply standing caricatures, the bare outlines of what they used to be.

Nick came to the end of a cul-de-sac, and began to drive back out the other way.

"Well," he muttered, "not much to look at, is there?"

"There's gotta be somewhere we can stay," Sean said, pressing his face to the window.

"How about that one there?" Isaac pointed past the older boy at an old brick apartment complex. "Some of those windows have been taped over. Might be able to bunk in there."

Nick parked between a pair of abandoned SUVs and stared up at the apartment. It was dark, and it reminded him of a rotting corpse, skin sloughing away to reveal pitted, empty cavities. A strange sense of foreboding settled in his chest. He blew out a terse breath, then got out of the Hummer. Opening the hatch on the back, he grabbed his Steyr and waved to Terrence.

"Let's check it out. Sean, Isaac- stay in the car with Rob. Try not to set yourselves on fire."

"How come Terry gets to go?"

"He's older," Nick grunted, loading the rifle.

Terrence stuck his tongue out at the other two. Nick whacked him on the shoulder.

"Knock it off. Grab a weapon."

The teenager pulled out a tire iron from the back and scrambled after him.

The front door was ajar. Nick approached first, turning on the flashlight he'd taped to the end of the Steyr. Inside, discarded trash and decaying furniture lay all over. Their steps echoed through the high indoor courtyard, and their voices followed behind, even the lowest of whispers seeming like shouts.

"So," Terrence began, whirling the tire iron he'd brought like a dancer's baton. "You're in a mood, huh?"

Nick didn't answer. He started up the groaning stairs, where the guardrail wobbled and creaked underneath his free hand.

The teenager followed him. "That's a yes, isn't it? I'll stop talking, then."

A wind started up, blowing trash across the courtyard, snapping the plastic against the windows. It was the only noise they could hear, besides their own breathing and boots against cheap linoleum. The quiet was the worst, Nick thought. His life had been so noisy until just a few months ago. It was unnerving.

Terrence began opening doors and looking inside the apartments. Many of them were locked; he used the tire iron to break off door handles and locks, shoving them open with his shoulder.

Nick didn't bother looking for anything. He checked for zombies- there were only bodies that he didn't bother to identify- and moved on.

The teenager met back up with him, bouncing the tire iron on his shoulder. "I haven't found anything," he said. "But I think people have been living here recently."

"It's possible," Nick bit out. "Let's try the third floor."

They reached the top of the stairs and halted.

Terrence was sniffing at the air. "Do you smell that?"

"Yeah," Nick could only frown. "It's kinda like..."

"Barbecue?" Terrence finished, one eye squinting in thought.

"Strange. Maybe people _are_ living up here," the survivor mused, stepping ahead and leading with the Steyr. The scent of cooking meat must have triggered something in his brain, because his stomach had begun to twist and snarl. God, he was hungry. "If I find a steak up here, I'm gonna eat the shit out of it," Nick said, wondering if that phrase was something Coach had also said so long ago.

Terrence smirked at him. "Let's rock-paper-scissors for it."

"I've never played that game."

"Have you ever played _any_ game?"

"Poker. Blackjack. I like pool."

"Then I'll play you at poker for it, how's that?"

A smile worked its way onto Nick's face. "If you think you can beat me at poker, you've got a lot to learn about-"

One of the doors down the hallway flew open with a loud _bang_. It bounced off of the wall and stood ajar. A lumbering figure stumbled out of the apartment with smoke following behind him, grunting. Nick lifted the Steyr, believing the person to be a zombie, but it wasn't- it was a survivor, dressed in layers of filthy clothing. A heavy beard covered his grimy face.

"Hey," he said in a booming voice. There was a sawed-off shotgun hanging at his hip. "You aren't from around here."

Nick kept Terrence behind him and held the rifle on the stranger. "No, I'm not."

"Where the fuck you come from, then?"

"It doesn't matter."

The big man belched. Nick flinched, taking a step back.

"You look like a high-strung motherfucker. I'm thinkin' you should drop that fancy gun of yours."

Terrence made a worried noise behind him.

"Just protecting my own, buddy," Nick said softly. "Don't want to get shot with that thing at your hip, huh?"

"What, this?" The man drew the sawed-off and pointed it jokingly at him. "It ain't even loaded, dude." To demonstrate, he pulled the trigger. It made only a harmless _click_, but Nick stiffened up, narrowing his eyes. He did not drop his rifle.

"_Nick_," Terrence hissed from behind him, and he ignored it.

"Now, my gun ain't gonna hurt nobody," the ramshackle survivor said, holstering the sawed-off. A grin crawled across his face, "but _he_ will."

Nick whirled, and saw a second stranger, tall and wiry, clutching Terrence to his chest. He held a long hunting knife to the teenager's neck, and a toothless smile was plastered on his greasy face.

"Might wanna put that thing down," he said, and his voice was high and reedy.

Nick stood with his gun pointed at him, and didn't move.

The big man behind him was coming closer. "Make the right choice, man. We'll slice him open. Don't think we won't."

Nick was still.

Terrence was staring at him with fearful, wide eyes. His lips moved, but no words came out. _Please_, he was trying to say, _please._

"Drop your _fucking_ gun, man!" the second survivor shouted, adjusting his grip on the knife, drawing the sharp point to graze threateningly against Terrence's throat.

The big survivor was approaching on his blind side, but Nick ignored him, ignored everything but the fact that he was about to see the teenager murdered right in front of him. He couldn't think.

He couldn't do _anything_.

The skinny survivor grinned again. His bright copper eyes stared at him, unflinching, challenging him to act.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-reader and good friend, Kit. Remember that time we played L4D2 and I totally cleaned Witch ears with buckshot?_

_Sorry about the delay. I hate excuses, but in all honesty I am working 65 hours a week now. Three jobs. Amazing!  
_

_Thanks, everyone, for reading!_

_Coming up next: The Economist. In which Terrence and Nick learn something new about their zombie-filled world.)  
_


	16. The Economist

There had been a lot of feelings going through Terrence's head since they'd entered the apartment. First, he was afraid he'd pissed Nick off- something he usually tried to avoid, unlike Sean. Maybe Nick was mad because he'd brought a tire iron instead of his shotgun. He thought it would be the smartest thing, since they had no idea when, or if, they'd ever find more ammunition. The apartment also looked to be deserted of humans, like everything else in the sleepy little town.

After a minute it became apparent that no, he hadn't irritated the man. It was another thing entirely that seemed to be bothering him.

The second feeling that came to him was that of curiosity. Was there anything salvageable in the apartment? How many rooms were there? What happened to the people- besides the obvious zombie virus?

All of these questions crashed down into dust when they'd run into a huge, nasty-looking survivor. He thought perhaps Nick would be able to talk their way out of the situation, or maybe even shoot the stranger and be done with the whole thing.

But then he was yanked suddenly from behind, there was cold steel at his neck, and the only feeling that ran through him was fear. He dropped the tire iron to grab at the wiry arms clutching him, and was only able to hiss the older man's name, which went unheeded.

That had only been seconds ago.

Presently, Nick was staring down the barrel of his rifle, good eye flicking from the teenager to the skinny survivor. His hands were shifting on the gun, and his whole body seemed primed, like a coiled spring or open bear trap, seconds from exploding into motion.

"Drop it," the voice at Terrence's ear shouted. "Just drop it, man."

The big survivor was still approaching, like a looming mountain.

_Behind you,_ he tried to scream. _Oh God, look behind you!_

His jaw and tongue were working, but he only made soft mewling noises.

"Gettin' fuckin' tired of this standoff shit," the big one eventually growled, lunging at Nick from behind. He got his huge hands on the rifle, cracking it back into Nick's jaw. The older man squirmed and bucked, trying to keep a grip on his gun.

"Kick his fucking ass, Jerry!" the skinny survivor yelled, tugging Terrence closer to him.

_Come on, man,_ the teenager's mind screamed. _Take him down, Nick!_

The rifle fired into the ceiling. The big guy- Jerry- began to laugh.

"Whoo hoo _hoo_, I got me a live one!" he howled.

The arm holding Terrence shifted- the survivor was beginning to drag him backwards.

Jerry had to be at least twice Nick's weight, easily a foot taller. It looked like he could break both the older man and his gun into two pieces without much effort. He kept his hands on the rifle while Nick thrashed about wildly, trying to shake him off, snarling and cursing.

It was like watching a wild animal trapped in a cage.

Terrence couldn't look away. He knew there was a high chance that these could be the last moments of Nick's life.

The survivor kept pulling him backwards, pressing the knife harder.

"Come with me, boy."

As they turned about and started moving into the doorway of a nearby apartment, Terrence saw Jerry finally rip the Steyr from Nick's hands, turn the rifle about-

The wall obscured whatever happened next.

His captor was chuckling again as he threw him to the ground. Immediately, the teenager scrambled to his feet and dove for the apartment door.

"No, no, no. None of _that_," the stranger growled, snatching him by the wrist.

Twisting about, Terrence swung a fist at the man. He caught him low on the cheek, but the survivor barely flinched. With more strength that the boy considered possible from a man that size, he was dragged forward by his arm and then slammed to the floor on his stomach.

"Stop wiggling, you little shit, or you're gonna-"

"Let me go! Let me _go_!" he shouted. "Nick! _Nick! _ Help me!"

The survivor forced his arm up until the words died in his chest, pain shooting up and around damn near to the tips of his toes. He yelped into the grimy carpet beneath him, squeezing his eyes shut against reflexive, burning tears.

"I am going to break your fucking arm if you don't- knock. It. Off."

"Please, no, please no-"

"Then stop moving and lay _still_."

The skinny survivor kept him on the floor with a sharp, bony knee in his lower back, and began tying his hands together behind him with some kind of thin, rough rope.

"What do you _want_ with me?" Terrence moaned. His heart was pounding in his skull, and his breaths kept getting caught up somewhere in the space between his lungs and his mouth.

The sounds of the scuffle outside were gone.

"You'll find out soon enough."

The pressure came off of his back, and the survivor stood up, leaving him tied on the floor. Terrence rolled until he could see the man, straining to hear any kind of noise outside the walls of the apartment.

Nothing.

His captor was drifting to and fro, now, through the apartment, gathering up a cardboard box that clattered heavily with whatever was inside.

Terrence shut his eyes and swallowed, mustering up his courage.

"Are you gonna kill me?" he asked, quietly.

The survivor turned and looked down at him. That awful smile sneaked back across his face.

"Oh, yeah."

Terrence shivered. "_Why_?"

"Why _not_?"

"Can't you just let us _go_?"

"Now," the man grinned, toothless and wild- an animal, a monster, "what would the fun be in that?"

Behind him, the door swung open with a groan of wet wood. Terrence lifted his head.

"Nick?"

No.

It was the huge man, Jerry, holding the Steyr. It looked like a child's toy in his massive hands.

"Did'ja get him?" the skinny one asked.

"No."

"_No_?"

"He ran off."

"Jerry, you fucking idiot. He's gonna be _comin' back for the kid_. You understand that, don't'cha?"

The big man looked a little cowed. It became apparent that he was not the most intelligent of the two. "Luke," he started, "I don't think he's gonna be back. Pretty sure I scared the shit outta him. 'Sides, I have his gun now, see?"

"That don't mean _shit_," Luke growled. "Didn't you hear the goddamn car earlier? He probably has other guns, you moron." He scratched at his filthy hair. "Go back after him. Hunt his ass down. And don't come back 'till you're sure he's _dead_ or _gone_."

"All right. All right." Jerry bobbed his head in affirmation. "I'll go get him, Luke."

"And when you kill him... try to get the body back here. Doesn't have to be in one piece."

Terrence watched the conversation from the floor without speaking, but after Jerry left and Luke turned back, moving to a table on the other end of the room, he started up again.

"If you let us go, we won't do anything," he said frantically. "I promise. We'll just go away. We won't bother you."

The survivor laughed aloud. It was a high, discordant sound, like a badly-tuned guitar.

Terrence thought he heard the roar of a car engine, outside. He turned his head as if he would be able to see it, the scared, mewling sound coming up out of his throat again. Shame and terror both crept across his thoughts, making him feel too hot and freezing cold all at once.

_Don't be like this_, he told himself. _Nick's coming back. Probably with everyone else, too. He's coming back for you. He's coming back. He-_

A scraping sound made him lift his eyes from the floor. Luke had pulled something out of the cardboard box and come over to him with slow, measured steps. The object looked like a nail gun or power drill without the actual drill attachment. It was covered in rust and hung heavy in the man's hands.

"Do you know what this is, boy?" Luke asked as he sat down in a folding metal chair in front of him, leaning down with the device hanging loosely between his legs.

Terrence lifted his head slightly, trying to wriggle backwards.

Luke gave him that awful, toothless smile and sat up, tipping the chair forward and back on two legs. "Tell me. What'd'ya think it is?" He waved the thing from side to side, turning it round so he could see.

"I don't know."

Luke snorted. "Bullshit. C'mon, boy, tell me what it is."

Terrence didn't answer. He shut his eyes.

There was a swift kick to his ribs.

"_Tell me_!"

Curled half up on the floor, rope digging into his wrists, he coughed and gave no answer. His whole body was shaking violently. _Nick, come back. Please. Please. Please._

Luke's smile came back. "All right. Have it your way, then." He brought the tool down against the boy's head. If it had been a gun, the barrel would be pressing against his temple.

"It's called a captive bolt," Luke explained, a Midwestern accent pulling at his words. "They use it to stun livestock in slaughterhouses." He touched the side of the 'barrel'. "A rod comes out right here, punches a hole right into their skull."

Terrence jerked away from the device as much as he could. The rough, rancid carpet pressed into his cheek, and the thin rope bit into the flesh of his wrists. He felt sick.

Luke continued to speak.

"You know what they do after they stun 'em in the slaughterhouses?"

Terrence shook his head, neither wanting the answer or the alternative.

Luke leaned over and pawed through the cardboard box, producing a wire coat hangar. He held it up, twisted it in the dirty orange light of the nearby sodium lamp. "It's called pithing."

The hot tears that had been collecting in the boy's eyes spilled over.

"They take a wire- like this one here, see?- and stick it right in that hole the little stun gun made," Luke explained with an easy, relaxed voice, leaning down to tap the clothes hangar against the teenager's temple where the captive bolt had been. "Just jam it in and twist it around a lot. Scrambles the brain up."

"I don't... I don't understand..."

"Do you know why they do this?"

"_Please_..."

"So the animal- cow, pig, sheep... whatever it is you want to _eat_- doesn't die right away. Gives you time to bleed it. Bleed the animal. Meat stays fresher, tastier that way." Luke's smile had become genuine.

Terrence's stomach was rolling. He gagged. A thin, stringy mouthful of spit trailed out of his mouth.

The survivor tipped back in the chair again, tapping the clothes hangar and captive bolt against each other.

"Now don't you wish you had guessed what it was?"

* * *

Nick flattened himself beneath a wire frame bed in a second-floor apartment, staring out at the half-open doorway and into the hall. He could hear the big guy's footsteps above him, and outside, the clutch of the Hummer shifting under inexperienced hands. He'd gone to the vehicle first, claiming the old shotgun before sending the other two off.

Sean could take care of Isaac alone, he figured. And Rob could protect them both.

God, he was such a fucking _idiot._ Of _course _the damn apartment was occupied, and of _course_ it had to be taken by the two craziest hicks he'd ever met in his entire life- and he was friends with Ellis!

It was probably supposed to look abandoned from the start, to lure unsuspecting survivors inside.

Well, it had worked just fucking _perfectly_.

_You should have trusted your gut,_ he thought to himself. _Should have turned the damned car around and slept in _that_._

Those two men hadn't slit Terrence's throat immediately, so it was his assumption that they didn't want him dead right away. Which meant he just might have enough time to avoid getting killed himself before pulling the kid out of that mess.

He hoped he got to him before anything worse happened.

Nick had Terrence's shotgun with him, pulled close to his body, his only ally. There were nine rounds in the magazine, and he had a handful in his pocket. Hopefully that would be enough to kill two men. The skinny one would probably only take one shot, but the big asshole...

Perhaps two to the skull.

The pounding footsteps came closer. Nick shrank back as the man's shadow passed across the doorway, even averting his gaze as if that alone would give his position away.

The big meat head didn't even pause to look inside- he just continued lumbering down the hall like a passing glacier in fast-forward. The Steyr was with him, which gave Nick a clear advantage:

He knew that there were exactly eight rounds left in the magazine, and no more.

Unless they had the correct type of ammunition for the rifle- _unlikely_- he would only have to worry about those eight shots.

But eight was enough to kill _anyone_, and he hoped the big fucker wasn't an accurate shooter.

Waiting until the footsteps faded to the end of the hallway, Nick shimmied out from underneath the bed and climbed to his feet. He walked carefully on the moldy carpet, crossing through the musty darkness of the apartment with only a fraction of the noise that the other man was making.

There was a shattered mirror in the bathroom. Nick took up a section of it and leaned against the doorway, reflecting the image of the outer corridor to himself.

He could see the big man out there, on the other end of the hall, the Steyr hanging out of his hand like a BB gun. He was facing away from him, ambling along as if he expected someone to appear right in front of his face. Nick kept the mirror steady in his hand and brought the shotgun up with the other.

_That's right, asshole,_ he thought. _Keep your back to me._

Dropping the glass on the carpet, he leaned around the doorjamb and lifted the gun, bringing the sight to his good eye.

_Don't move, don't move, just stay there..._

Chewing at his tongue, Nick took the shot.

A miss. It hit the nearby railing instead of his target.

The big man whirled around, shock on his face. He lifted the Steyr and fired.

Nick sheltered himself behind the jamb of the door.

Seven shots left.

The big guy started down the hall toward him, steps heavy and loud.

Nick took the chance- an admittedly _stupid_ chance- and leaned out halfway into the corridor.

_Choof. _

Six.

_Chkk-chuh-chkk._

The sound of the bolt reloading echoed sharply through the complex.

He retreated back into the apartment, knowing the big guy was going to be right on his ass.

Nick went to the apartment's slider door to its deck. A fragmented piece of plastic was hanging where the glass used to be, flapping weakly in the breeze.

He came out onto the deck, half-expecting to see fading red taillights, but it was just dark. It was snowing and windy, kicking up ice at his face. The cold was easy to ignore as he climbed up onto the deck railing and crossed to the next one, not looking down. Heights didn't bother him. It was the possibility of what could be underneath that did.

The huge man came slipping out into the snow.

He raised the rifle and fired, but Nick was already ducking into the other apartment.

Five.

He was already out into the corridor and dashing toward the flight of stairs. If there was one thing that Nick had to compensate for his vision, he believed it was his speed.

It definitely wasn't his good looks or glowing personality.

The Steyr barked behind him; at the same time, a tangerine-sized hole appeared on the wall in front of him.

Four. Almost there.

He hit the bottom floor and scrambled to the half-open custodian's closet under the stairs, unable to remember which apartments were locked and which weren't. Nick could practically see himself getting stalled trying to open one and ending up with his brains all over the courtyard.

Crouching down between a nasty-smelling mop bucket and a dented washing machine in the cramped space, he could hear the huge survivor's thundering steps as he took the stairs two-by-two.

"Where the fuck are you?" the man roared. "Get the fuck out here, so I can shoot ya!"

Nick let out a breath and backed up into the darkness.

_All right, you big dumb son of a bitch. Turn around so I can stick this in your back._

For a second, he wondered if the big guy was going to go back up the stairs.

Then he came towards the door of the closet, making a low, curious sound.

Nick pressed himself against the washing machine, and raised the shotgun.

_Let's finish it, then._

_

* * *

_

Terrence watched as Luke laid out a section of plastic sheeting on the floor, carefully spreading it over the trashed carpet.

His heart wouldn't stop racing.

The sounds of gunshots out in the courtyard could only mean a couple of things:

Nick had indeed come back, this time with the shotgun, and he was trading shots with Jerry.

Or Jerry had already killed him and was just shooting him some more, for fun.

Or it was a third survivor, and both of them were after Nick.

It didn't matter. Terrence swallowed the vomit in his mouth and cast his eyes to the captive bolt gun on the nearby table.

The Steyr went off again, outside.

Then, the low roar of a shotgun.

Four blasts, all in rapid succession.

Quiet.

Luke started whistling amiably, ignoring or unable to hear the shots outside, straightening out the edges of the plastic sheet. He went to the little kitchen and came back with several large knives, laying them out neatly onto the table. The coat hangar wire was still there. He picked it up and broke off the bottom part, then bent it double, so that the two ends faced in the same direction.

"All right, shit-stain," Luke said, eyes bright with excitement, "let's get you over here."

Terrence fought. It wasn't much but awkward flailing and angry yells, but it was all he could do to resist. Luke still handled him like one would handle a rambunctious toddler. He set him down on the plastic and picked up the captive bolt with easy movements.

"Let me go," the teenager begged. "Don't do this."

"Try to be still, kid. If I miss, you'll just end up blind or deaf or something worse."

"Oh God, _please._"

Luke half knelt and shoved the tool against his head.

Terrence tried to move away, but then the survivor grabbed his face with one wiry hand, pressing him to the floor. He could feel more tears sliding down, up over his nose to drop softly to the plastic underneath him.

"_Stay still_, I said."

A muscle jumped in the man's jaw. He moved the captive bolt around until the barrel sat snugly against the teenager's temple.

The apartment door opened.

Terrence couldn't see who entered, but Luke did, and when he lifted his eyes, a small grin appeared. But who he saw was not who he'd exprected, and surprise filled his face.

"What the _fuck-_"

Luke's right shoulder twisted off to one side, and in the same instant, he let out a horrendous shout of pain. He fell back, dropping the captive bolt to bring his hand up to his right arm.

"Oh, fuck, oh Jesus!"

Terrence was twisting about to see what had happened, kicking his legs against the thick plastic underneath him to try to turn around.

_Chuh-shkkk-chk._

A rifle. A bolt-action, reloading.

He hadn't even heard the shot.

"Nick?" he called wildly, trying to roll over to see. "Nick! Is that you?"

Luke's screams had turned into shrill, hiccuping sobs. Out of the corner of one eye, Terrence could see him scrambling backwards. His shoulder was dripping blood.

Footsteps crinkled the plastic behind him. Terrence thrashed, desperate to see who it was. He saw the familiar shape of the Steyr and a pair of arms, a black fleece jacket hanging down off of them. The jacket he'd given to Nick as a gift, all the way back in the Capital. Relief rushed through him and made his heart beat even faster- if that was possible.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck_," Luke moaned from the other side of the room.

Nick ignored his cries and knelt down quickly next to Terrence, trying to untie his wrists. The knots were tight. He made a little sound of frustration.

"Do you still have your knife?"

"Yeah," Terrence swallowed, trying his best to look at him. "Right pocket."

While Nick was digging it out, he looked over at the decrepit man, who was still shuddering and twitching on the floor, begging for mercy.

"Shut up. I'll be with you in a second."

He cut Terrence's bonds and tugged him to his feet.

"Thanks, Nick," the teenager gasped, rubbing vigorously at his wrists.

The older man didn't say anything, but for a few seconds, he met his good eye. Where normally he would only see indifference and callousness, there were now so many emotions that it was impossible to pick out one from another. Nick turned away, and approached the squirming man on the floor.

"Oh, Jesus, man," Luke squealed out. "Oh, Jesus, don't kill me. I didn't mean any harm. I was goin' to let him go. I swear!"

Nick leveled the Steyr at the man's face.

Terrence stepped up next to him and put a hand on his arm.

"No. Don't shoot him."

Nick glared at him, the most spiteful look Terrence had ever received in his entire life. "What do you mean, '_no_'? You want to let him _go_?" He looked back down at the bleeding man on the floor, disgust painted on his face.

Terrence held out a hand. "No_. I _want to do it."

They stared at each other. There was that strange mixed expression again.

Wordlessly, Nick took his finger off of the trigger and offered the Steyr out to him.

It was heavier than he remembered it being. He gripped hard to the forestock, lifting it carefully to point the business end at Luke's face.

The man shrank back as far as he could go- only marginally, as the wound in his shoulder was at least the size of his own fist, enough to cripple any man. Tears and mucus ran down his face as he looked up wildly, his bloodshot eyes darting from Nick to Terrence and back again, as if salvation could be found in one or the other.

"Please," he whimpered, "please. I was going to let you go."

"If I left you here, you'd probably die of blood loss and infection," Terrence said. The trigger was firm underneath his finger. "This is more than you deserve."

"Jerry," Luke suddenly wailed. "Jerry, Jerry! Help me!"

"He's dead," Nick told him, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You two picked the wrong survivors this time, buddy." He was looking around the room with distant interest, good eye flicking over the items on the floor, the stains on the carpet and walls. "Shoot him, Terry."

Luke made a low-pitched moan of fear.

Twisting his face away from the sight, Terrence pulled the trigger.

_Choof._

Then the quiet crept in.

His hands were shaking so hard that he could feel it in his stomach, his feet, his head. He lowered the rifle, and kept his eyes on the wall, away from the corpse he'd just created.

"Are you okay?" he heard Nick ask. He thought there might be genuine concern in the man's voice, but since he wasn't sure he'd actually heard that from him before, it was hard to tell what it was.

"I think I'm going to puke," Terrence whispered, letting the Steyr drop nearly to the floor. Nick took it from him, and with his other hand turned him toward the doorway.

"Let's go," the older man said. "Come on. You're fine."

He was about ten feet out of the apartment when his stomach heaved violently and he hurled between his legs, fingers twitching as he bent over his knees. There went all of the food he'd eaten today. What a waste.

Nick stepped back from the mess and didn't say anything, but Terrence knew that he was probably ashamed and disgusted. _Wow, you can't even defend yourself out here without getting sick._

But when he lifted his eyes, he could see _sympathy_ on Nick's face. _Sympathy._

"I puked my first time, too," he said, quietly.

"Sorry," Terrence said, swallowing a gag. He wondered if Isaac felt this way whenever he put down the military personnel. The young man had never said anything about it. "Sorry, Nick."

"It's okay. Take a deep breath."

"Yeah." He tried to do so, but he could still feel the heaviness of the captive bolt against his head. For the first time in weeks, the thought came to his head:

_I don't want to do this anymore. I want my mom._

But she was dead, just like Sean's mom, and Isaac's mom, and everyone else's mom.

Terrence slowly straightened up. Nick came a little closer, looking him over, seeing if he was okay.

Without thinking about it, the teenager wrapped his arms around the man and tugged him close. Nick's whole body stiffened up, but he did not try to move away. He brought one hand up and patted Terrence's shoulder awkwardly.

"You'll be fine," he said.

The teenager buried his face in the crook of Nick's shoulder, hugging him as tightly as he could. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I just don't-... Nick, I was so _scared_. What if you hadn't come back? What if-"

"Enough," Nick murmured, grabbing Terrence's arms and pushing him gently away to arm's length. "You're going to be fine, do you understand?"

He nodded, swiping at his eyes.

"Terry, look at me."

He did. They traded stares, and for the first time Terrence thought he could see Nick for what he really was. As if a mask had been ripped from his face and showed the truth as clear as anything, as if it had been written on his skin.

He was just as terrified and lost as the rest of them.

When Nick spoke, Terrence knew the strength in his words was false. "We're going to go back to the car, and we're going to get the hell out of here, and never look back, ever again. Okay?"

"Okay."

Even false strength was still strength.

Nick patted him on the shoulder again. "Let's go."

Terrence trailed after him, wiping his eyes a final time.

On the way across the apartment courtyard, Nick gave him a lighthearted shove.

"Hey. Don't ever hug me again."

* * *

_(A/N: Gracious, that last chapter got a lot of reviews! Thank you so much, guys! It makes me so happy to see people enjoying this fic. I'm overjoyed. At this point, Two Step is about half to two-thirds done. Somewhere in between the two._

_Again, I apologize for being so slow at updating. I'm really trying hard to be on time!  
_

_As always, thank you to my loyal and dependable beta-reader, Kit. Nickfase forever. _:|_  
_

_Coming up next: The Role Model. Where Nick and his three tag-alongs go for a little walk.)  
_


	17. The Role Model

"It's been a long time."

"I know."

"What do you think happened up there?"

"I don't know, Isaac."

"Do you think they're okay, Sean?"

"I don't know."

The two boys sat in the cab of the Hummer in a darkened garage- the only place Sean could get the thing parked without crashing it- and stared out into the snowy streets behind them.

It was dark. Without streetlights, the world outside was nothing but a hollow void. They knew it was snowing, but they couldn't see the flakes falling. The only source of light was their little electric lamp on the dashboard, which flickered and dampened at random intervals. Sean wondered how long it would last.

Periodically, he would start the Hummer back up and flick the lights on and off, hoping perhaps they'd be seen easier in the dark. He hesitated on doing it more, afraid to run the gasoline reserve out and terrified of attracting whatever was out there that _wasn't_ Nick or Terrence.

"Do you think they'll be able to see us? To find their way back?"

"Isaac!" Sean sighed and shook his head in frustration. "_I don't know_, don't you _get_ that?"

The youngest balked a little. "I- I'm sorry..."

It was quiet for a minute, until Isaac started sniffling. He was chewing pretty hard on his lips, trying to stay silent even though there were tears falling down his face.

"You..." the older growled and looked away. "You're such a baby. Stop crying."

"I'm _sorry._"

"God, Isaac."

"I don't know- what- what to _do_."

"Nick told us to wait for him, didn't he? And that's exactly what we're doing."

Isaac nodded, rubbing briskly at his face.

Sean turned and looked back out the window.

"He'll come back. You know him. They're both fine."

He stared out into the unseeable snowfall.

_You better come back, asshole._

_

* * *

_

It took a few hours, mostly because it was so dark out, but Nick was able to find the Hummer thanks to Sean flicking the lights. He knocked on the back window and motioned for them to unlock it as Terrence staggered up behind him.

Both of them were shivering, half-frozen. Terrence's lips were blue. They climbed into the front seats and trembled in front of the heater vents while Sean and Isaac assaulted them with questions, and Rob tried his hardest to climb up into Nick's lap through the center console.

"What took you so long?"

"What was in that apartment?"

"Are you okay?"

"Why did you leave us like that?"

Terrence wouldn't say anything. Actually, Sean noted, he hadn't said a word since he'd returned. The only one who spoke was Nick, and his answer to their questions was this:

"We ran into some Jehovah's Witnesses, that's all. Had to tell them we didn't want any."

Sean scowled. "Some answer."

Nick glanced at him. "Well, it's all you're getting."

"I wish you wouldn't lie to us. We're all in this together. You don't need to keep secrets, Nick." Sean leaned forward and tapped Terrence on the shoulder. "Hey, come on. Tell me what happened."

Terrence shook his head. "Don't worry about it." His voice was quiet, and he kept his eyes on his hands hovering over the heaters.

"That's it, then? You disappear for hours, telling us to run, and then come back and say it doesn't matter?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Nick said, shoving Rob patiently off of his legs.

Sean sighed again.

Isaac had been quiet, simply listening in, but now he spoke up. "I'm glad you got back," he put in. "I was real worried about you guys."

Nick nodded. "Well, here we are."

The heat blasting through the vents was the only noise for a while. It was extremely uncomfortable. Sean was used to voices and arguments, or Terry laughing or Nick complaining about one thing or another. But nobody was talking.

Even with the cloying smell of gasoline, they stayed in the Hummer until morning light- Nick shutting it off about thirty minutes after he returned, to conserve fuel- and then set off as soon as they could see the roads.

* * *

_This is Sean's apocalypse:_

_The world is different. Everything he'd learned, all the manners and morals that had been drilled into him from the beginning of his life, had become pointless and immaterial. You have to be as ruthless and dark as the rest of this place, or you will not survive; this is what he tells himself, anyway._

_All he'd ever known was medicine. His mother was a nurse, his father an engineer. But, Dad had never been around much, so Mom had one day sat him down and showed him her medical terminology book. He'd read the entire thing, front to back, and asked for more._

_So she taught him._

_He'd been readying for college. He was going to be a doctor._

_Then, _this _happened- they'd been in Mom's car at the time, coming home from the Whole Foods, ready to make stir-fry. He remembered being so angry when they'd gotten stuck in traffic outside Bethesda, so pointlessly irritated at the fact he had to wait to eat._

_Sean and his mother had heard much about the Green Flu. She'd been hearing about it for weeks. Some kind of virus, she'd said. The 'Flu scare' of the year. It had been Swine Flu the year before. Time for a new one, she'd said._

_Not a flu._

_That day, stuck in traffic, his whole world went away. Everything. College, high school, Mom, and stir-fry. Just gone._

_College: burnt to the ground._

_High school: burnt to the ground._

_Mom?_

_He watched her get taken by the all-consuming horde that he was about to become intimately familiar with over a very short period of time._

_It was the first of four times he would ever drive a car. He took her sedan, turned onto the shoulder of the highway, and sped away from the riot._

_

* * *

_

The Hummer rolled down the snowy freeway.

Sean sat in the backseat with Isaac. Terrence and Nick still hadn't said too much.

Actually, nobody talked. At all. They looked out the windows at the dead, white country outside, with the Hummer rumbling softly underneath them, the wind whistling through the bullet holes in the roof. Sean wished for a radio. He was fond of music, but he knew the only thing that ever played on the airwaves anymore was the Presidential signal on loop.

"Hey, guys," Isaac spoke up out of the blue.

Nobody replied for a minute.

Nick, surprisingly, was the first to relent. "What is it, Isaac?"

The youngest squirmed in his seat a bit. "What are zombies' favorite streets?"

Sean looked at him. "_What_?"

"I asked, 'What are zombies' favorite streets?'"

"We heard you the first time," Nick said. "The fuck do you mean, 'favorite streets?'"

Isaac was smiling. "_What are zombies' favorite streets?_ You don't know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"_Dead ends_!"

Nick's eyebrows shot up. Terrence let out a snorting noise that might have been a laugh once, but instead became a soft, pointless sound.

Isaac beamed. "Get it? _Dead _ends?"

"Izzy, what the hell was _that_?"

"It was a joke. I made it up. I thought of some more, if-"

The Hummer made a sudden, low scraping noise under the hood. Terrence jolted up in shock, whipping his head around. Sean saw Nick's eyebrows tighten. He shifted the gear; it groaned and stuck. The steering wheel held firm.

"The fuck?"

"What's going on?" Isaac squeaked, craning his neck to try and see the dashboard.

Nick didn't answer- he was still messing with the clutch, pressing random buttons on the dash.

The Hummer coasted to a stop, wheels locked and squealing.

Sean glanced outside- nothing but white. "Did we run out of gas?"

"Still half a tank," Nick said, twisting the screwdriver and turning the vehicle off. He poked around under the steering wheel until he found the hood latch. "Who here knows anything about cars?"

Sean and Terrence shrugged.

"I helped my mom change a tire, once," Isaac offered.

"It's better than nothing. Come on."

Nick climbed out into the snow and the little boy scrambled after him.

When they shut the doors and moved to the prow of the Hummer, Sean leaned forward in the quiet and looked at Terrence.

"So what happened out there?"

"Nothing," was the reply.

"Don't give me that. Geez, Terry, you haven't said more than eight words since you got back!"

"Got nothin' _to_ say."

Sean shook him slightly. "What did you _see_?"

Terrence turned his head slowly and looked at him. His eyes were dark, distant. He looked like a different person. A stranger. "Just drop it, okay, Sean?" he implored, expression soft. "It's nothing for you to worry about."

"But I _am_ worried."

A smile tugged weakly at one side of his lips. "Thanks for being concerned about me, but I'm all right."

"_'You'_? You think I'm worried about _you_? No, I'm scared you're going to get distracted as crap and shoot someone on accident, Terry!"

His face fell- but it had barely been alive to start with. A small sigh hissed through his nose. "I'm not going to shoot anyone, all right? Just chill out. You're too freaky sometimes."

A muffled curse came from outside- that would be Nick. Sean turned his eyes to the windshield in time to see the man slam the hood shut and throw his hands up in frustration. Isaac flinched slightly away, a defeated look on his face.

Nick climbed back into the driver seat with a grunt. He turned the screwdriver in the ignition hole, trying to coax the engine to life, but it only made a loud, undulating growl, and wouldn't turn over.

"Come on, you bitch, come _on_," he snarled, working the pedal.

The Hummer made tortured noises under the hood. _Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh. _A couple of times it sounded like it might actually start, and Nick would scream at it to _run you dumb bitch_, but then it would let out a hiss, click once, and die. Steam- or smoke- had begun to drift up from under the hood.

Eventually, Nick was pleading with the Hummer, begging it to come back around.

"Please, baby, _please_."

Sean looked over, and saw Isaac was crossing his fingers.

_Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh._

_Sssss-click._

Nick tried again.

Now Sean crossed his fingers, too.

_Ruh-ruh-uh-uh-_

This time, it clicked, and then something sizzled under the hood, popped, and died. Nick twisted the screwdriver gingerly, back and forth, but nothing happened anymore. He took it out, replaced it carefully, turned it. Nothing.

Not even the electronics were working anymore.

"_Fuck!_" Nick snapped, throwing the screwdriver down. He slammed his hands on the steering wheel. "Fuck! Piece of fucking cheap Army shit! Shove it up your ass and break it off. Fuck you!"

It was silent for a while, nobody daring to speak lest they draw the man's ire. Even Rob lay low on the floor, ears pulled back and tail tucked down.

The snow fell outside. A light breeze brushed it against the windshield.

Nick glared out at nothing, hands tight on the steering wheel as if the car were alive and he was suffocating it in his anger.

Terrence eventually had the courage to say something.

"I guess we're walking, huh?"

Nick looked at him. An angry thought passed over his face, then he shook his head. "You know exactly how cold it is out there. How long d'you think we'll last, huh? We'll be lucky if it's two days."

"Actually," Sean spoke up cautiously, "if we keep moving, keep hydrated, and take shelter before nightfall, we'll probably be okay for a while."

"How long is 'a while?'"

"Depends on if it gets any colder, or a blizzard starts up, or what. But if it stays like _that-_" Sean pointed out the windshield, "-we'll be good for as long as we want to walk. You two were so cold last night because it was _night_. And you weren't exactly dressed for trudging through the snow."

Nick turned in the seat and stared at him. He had the most searching of looks, as if he could see right through you and all the way to the other side. What could he do with _two _eyes, he wondered. Sean squirmed inwardly every time he received that look, but he never balked away. If he wasn't firm, Nick might think he was lying.

"How can you be so sure?" the man asked, and his good eye was laced with suspicion.

"I told you. My mom was a nurse. I know all about hypothermia." He stopped for thought. "And I got lost in the mountains once, while we were skiing."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "And that qualifies you to send us all into the cold?"

"More than anything else," Sean held his gaze. He wasn't backing down- he knew he was right.

The man's jaw worked for a second, then he looked over at Terrence.

"All right. I guess we're walking."

* * *

_When Sean meets Terrence, it is three weeks in. He's adjusted as well as any fifteen-year-old could adjust. Perhaps it was easier for a younger mind. Nobody would ever know._

_He's become adept at scavenging, at listening for the noise that zombies make, at hiding and covering his trail. His only weapon is a pistol he'd taken from another- dead- survivor. Lacerations like he'd never seen, never even heard of, had killed that one. All across the chest and throat, inches deep._

_Sean is not an idiot. At this point, he's already figured out what he is._

_An asymptomatic carrier. The Typhoid Mary of the zombie virus- the Green Flu._

_But what he doesn't know is that he isn't alone._

_One late afternoon as he wandered from the confines of his bookstore safehouse, he heard gunfire. He knew of the military's installation, he knew he was too late to evacuate, that he was stuck in D.C. until further notice. And he knew they would kill him if they found him._

_So he kept away from gunfire, as much as he could, but this time it came to him._

_He'd found a pack of gum in an abandoned car and was savoring the minty taste, and beginning to wish he had a toothbrush, when the shots sounded. There were only a few, but then he heard a voice, the sounds of the zombies, and he crouched down behind the car._

_Curousity is a strong trait in Sean's family. He would never be rid of it._

_When the sounds of scuffle died and silence swept down the street like a wind, he got to his feet and stole down the way, pistol ready. He wanted to know, that was all. Wanted to know if the military really was this close, if he had to find a different place to stay._

_He poked around a bit. Glanced inside windows. It was quiet. A few dead zombies on the ground._

_Then, a soft and scratchy voice, pleading for help._

_And that's where he found Terrence- stuck underneath the chassis of a wrecked truck, half-collapsed from dehydration. He'd been running for weeks, but his water had given out and he couldn't find any more. Stores had already been looted, and the city's utilities had been shut off._

_Sean was scared to even touch him, warning him again and again that he might turn him, trying to explain what a carrier was. Terrence scoffed, grinned, and showed him the healing wound of a zombie bite._

_'I guess we're in the same boat,' he'd said._

_

* * *

_

They couldn't carry much. Nick took his rifle and Isaac's, and his duffel bag. Terrence took his shotgun, but Sean's military rifle was too heavy to take with them, so he fell back to a pistol. The most important things they stuffed into their two backpacks- food, Sean's medical supplies, and the thickest two blankets they could find.

"Get into the clothes, guys. Put on more layers."

Most of the clothing was too big for Isaac and too small for Nick, but the youngest pulled an extra fleece on anyway and carefully rolled the baggy sleeves up over his slender wrists. Nick used Terrence's pocketknife to cut out the soft felt lining of a jacket, so he could protect his neck with it.

They stood amongst each other, a ramshackle sight if there ever was one. Isaac had a heavy ski-mask on, and with all the other pieces of clothing on him, all Sean could see were his eyes and a few strands of his filthy red hair. He carried a recyclable grocery bag over one shoulder, full of food and plastic bottles. It was all he was strong enough to take. Terrence was wearing two jackets and looked like some kind of bulky hunchback with the pack over his shoulders. He kept his eyes to the ground and his words in his mouth. Nick brushed his hair back out of his face and pulled his hat on.

Nobody talked for a minute- runners waiting for the starting gun.

But Rob was already trotting ahead, tail held high, nose stuffed down into the snow.

Nick threaded his fingers through the gun and duffel straps at one shoulder, and looked out at the empty white space that lay before them.

"You guys ready?" he asked.

Sean nodded.

What other choice did they have?

* * *

_When they meet Isaac, it is six weeks in. They'd known of a sniper for a while now, picking off zombies and military alike. Sean and Terrence tried to keep out of his radius, but ultimately failed._

_One morning, they were back-to-back in an alleyway, shooting down a horde that had come to them, when a big one appeared from the other side- one of the tall ones, with the tongues and the boils. It had lashed out and grabbed Terrence, pulling him to the frost-covered ground and dragging him through the throng._

_Sean was sure he wouldn't be able to save him. He wasn't sure he'd even be able to save himself from this mess._

_Then- _blam, blam-_- the sniper rifle._

_The tongue-zombie fell, and other zombies fell. Terrence scrambled back to his friend and their unseen benefactor continued to fire, dropping them all one-by-one._

Blam, blam, blam.

_Like a ticking clock._

_When the fight is over they stand in the silver light and wonder what to do next, staring in the direction the rifle sounds had come from. Up on top of a convenience store- dead center of what they knew was the sniper's radius- stood a tiny little figure. He waved._

_Cautiously, they'd come over. The little boy met them on the bottom floor, all filthy skin and big, wide eyes and a rifle almost as tall as he was. He'd had a bad cut on his leg, and it was getting infected._

_He called himself Isaac, and asked for help._

_Sean took care of him._

_And two became three._

_

* * *

_

They marched through the snow, Nick in front while the boys walked where his boots had already been. What they ended up making was one long trench through the white, like foot-soldiers. Isaac, at the end of the line, kept the driest, but he lagged behind a lot.

Sean would turn to see him a few hundred feet back, slogging through the snow with an obnoxious sluggishness.

"Hurry up," he would snap, "you're too slow!"

"I'm sorry," Isaac would pant when ever he eventually caught up. "I'm sorry."

Only a few hours passed before the sunlight hiding up above the overcast sky began to dwindle. Sean had everyone stop at an abandoned ranch-style house, even though there was at least another hour of daylight left.

"And what if we don't find shelter in that hour? What then?" he asked, and nobody argued.

The house hadn't been boarded up, but most of the windows were still intact. Nick did a sweep first, taking Rob with him, but when he returned to them at the front door, all he could do was shrug.

"There's nothing here."

Not even a body.

But in the den, there was a fireplace, and in the backyard, a wood shed. Terrence broke the lock off and Sean helped him carry firewood inside. Nick found a gossip magazine, crumpled it up, and set it alight with his plastic cigarette lighter. He and Sean had begun to add kindling to the fire when Isaac came dashing in from a hallway, clutching a pile of books to his chest.

Nick lifted his head. "What's that?"

"Comic books! Check it out." He sat down on top of his knees and set them out in front of him. The print was still glossy, the pictures still bright and colorful. "Oh, Star Wars! I love these!"

Terrence came in with the last load of wood in his arms, saw the books, and rolled his eyes. "Where did you find those, Izzy?"

"Down the hall. On a bookshelf." He held one up. "Want to read?"

* * *

_Three became four in early December. Their safe house- the one they lived in the longest, the pharmacy outside Chillum- was soon going to be discovered. It was only a matter of how long, how many more places could they skip to until they ran out of nooks and crannies and the military cornered them._

_It was a normal morning. Terrence had gone out to scavenge, Isaac covering him on the roof._

_And what Terrence dragged back with him may as well have been a picture of the world outside their city, a book that detailed the state of things beyond what they knew._

_Nick is everything that Sean has feared._

_What they yearned for, what they worked for- an escape from D.C.- was just as empty and threatening as the world _inside_ their walls. There is nothing better, no greener grass. It was only what you could find and shape and create from the ruins of what is left._

_But he saves him- this stranger, this scarred, bitter man- and, in return, Nick frees them from the Capital. Nick is determined and desperate like the zombies are determined and desperate. Sean knows he's not going to stop. Not until he's gotten what he wanted. Not unless something stopped _him.

_It had taken a 5.56 millimeter bullet to an artery to do so._

_He almost gives up on Nick when he first sees him- in shock, pale, nearly dead already, nothing but an arrangement of bone and sinew and scars. _

_Terrence begs him to at least try. _

_They keep a loaded pistol nearby just in case._

_And Sean, despite his doubts, fixes him._

_He is an utter asshole._

_But he's part of his team, now, like Isaac came to be part of it and Terrence came to be part of it._

_Nick, and the dog._

_Sean had come a long way from stir-fry in his mother's sedan._

_

* * *

_

The fire grew, slowly chasing out the chill from the room.

They sat together, as close as they could get to the flames without combusting. Nick had his back against an overturned love seat, staring into the fire, keeping to himself. Terrence idly tossed small splinters into the fireplace. Next to him, Isaac was leaning against a sleeping Rob, eagerly reading his new comic books.

Their boots were all lined up against the hearth, socks wrung out and set to dry.

"Ohh. '_New X-Men. Planet X: Conclusion_.'" He held it up for Terrence to see. "Look, it's Wolverine."

"Wolverine's my favorite," the eldest said dully, grabbing the comic book to look it over.

Sean looked out the window. "It's snowing pretty hard."

"At least we aren't out in it," Nick said. With a little shake of his arms, he climbed to his feet. Sean tried not to let the clinical half of his mind note the stiffness in his limbs. The cold wasn't good for him.

"Where are you going?" Isaac asked as the older man went toward the hallway.

"What do you think? I gotta piss."

When he came back, he was carrying a large cloth sack in his arms. Nick set it down, turned it over, and dumped what was inside out onto the floor.

"Jackpot!" Isaac cried.

It was an air mattress.

There was a little hand-crank inside the bag that they had to twist to inflate it, but they all took turns until it was done. Terrence and Isaac splayed out on it first, the youngest giggling as he was bounced around by the other's weight.

"Keep Rob off of it," Nick said. "He's too big. He'll pop it."

Sean dug around in the house until he found a fairly large stack of clean blankets and sheets- no _way_ was he going to grab the used ones from the bedrooms- in a hallway closet. He piled them onto the mattress and Isaac burrowed underneath, dragging his comic books with him.

The routine they'd fallen into, since someone had to keep the fire going, was to take two shifts at night. Two would take the first half of the night and the other two would take the last half. Sean figured six or so hours each. The nights were getting so long.

Nick and Terrence took first. Sean felt he would rather sleep first, and get up later. Besides, it was warmer now than it probably would be in six hours, and even with the blankets and sharing space with Isaac it was already going to be freezing.

As he stretched out onto the air mattress, tugging the heavy pile of bedding over him, Isaac wriggled about until he was pushed up against his back. Sean pushed one arm under his head and shut his eyes.

* * *

_He is tired, and he is scared._

_But he's not alone._

_And that's more important than anything else._

_

* * *

_

He woke to the sound of soft voices. For a while, he ignored them and curled up tighter under the blanket, hoping to fall back asleep and get a bit more rest. Isaac was still pressed up tight behind him.

Nick's quiet murmur and Terrence's whispers filtered through the fabric of the blanket and the sleep in his head, rousing his curiosity. Sean turned over, keeping his face hidden to feign sleep.

"It's still hard to believe," Terrence was saying.

The flames spit in the fireplace.

"I didn't think it'd gotten that bad out here," Nick's voice came.

"You and me both. I thought the zombies were the only monsters."

"Apparently not."

Sean shifted a little, and felt suffocated by his own breaths under the blanket.

"Hey, Nick?"

"...Yeah?"

"Thank you. For coming back for me."

A slight scoff. "What was I gonna do? Let him have you?"

Sean felt confused. What were they _talking_ about?

The incident in the apartment. It had to be.

Nobody talked for a few minutes.

Then, "Nick?"

With an uncharacteristically patient tone, "What is it, Terry?"

"Do you think we'll become like that?"

Quiet.

Become like _what?_

"God, I hope not."

Then, very quietly, as if ashamed of the words, Terrence whispered:

"What are we going to do, Nick?"

And Nick...

He didn't answer.

Sean lay there, awake in the silence, until Terrence came over and wordlessly shook him to take his shift.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-reader and Executive Officer, Kit. Now go below decks and find that sharpshooter, I need to slap him for leaving stains on my chair._

_I am _so_ appreciative of all the time you readers have taken to leave me a review. The fact that you take time out of your day to read this and leave a comment on it just makes me so damn happy. I write as a hobby, it helps me relax in my off-time, and I also love L4D2, so naturally I mixed the two together. On a related note, if anyone here has the 360 version, message me (through FF.n) and we can play a game together sometime! (I have a terrible habit of hunting down all Witches and cr0wning them, though.)_

_Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  
_

_Coming up next: The Chaperone. Have a clip:_

_'_There was something big out there- some strange long shape laying a few miles away. Nick turned the dials on the rifle scope to adjust the settings, trying to see it more clearly. The object was masked by snowfall, unrecognizable. But it wasn't a building, and it was much too large to be a car.

Then, he noticed something sticking up out of the ground near it- angular and long.

A wing.

He was looking at a crashed plane.'_)_


	18. The Chaperone

It was cold.

Nick opened his eyes and stared up at the blank ceiling of the old rancher house. Next to him, Terrence was sleeping. The teenager had been trying to inch closer to him, and for the first few minutes he'd shied away, but eventually relented and let him curl up close to his right side- the side he could see from. Even with Terrence there, he was still freezing. He tried not to shiver so much, but his body kept trembling uncontrollably in random, rapid bursts.

He could hear Isaac and Sean across the way, speaking in hushed voices. Nick blinked slowly, unable to decipher what they were saying through the chilled mugginess wrapped around his brain. He wished more than anything that he could sleep, but when his body was cold and his stomach was empty, it was difficult to concentrate on any other subject.

Isaac giggled under his breath about something.

Nick rolled over on his side and shoved his hands into his armpits. It was the easiest way to keep them warm, and nowadays they were starting to ache whenever they got too cold. He shivered some more and curled up tighter, pulling his knees to his chest. There used to not be much space between his stomach and his legs when he did that; now there was a good couple of inches.

He needed to take better care of himself. If not for his own sanity, then for these three boys- these _children_- that had come under his wing. Nick resented himself for it, but if he didn't watch after them, nobody else would, and if he hadn't dragged them with him out of D.C., then they'd probably be dead right now.

That was something to be proud of... wasn't it?

Fuck.

He was in too deep. Good and buried now. There wasn't any way he was getting out of this without them. They were too used to him. Too attached.

And so was he.

Nick thought of Rochelle and Coach and Ellis and then, _what a good addition these three boys would make to our group._

A big fucking happy family.

Fuck, it was cold.

* * *

Warmth.

There was someone tangled up in his arms. His mind went back to an easier, if not quieter, time of his life when his vision was whole and he was married and woke up everyday with her next to him-

Then, Terrence snored, shifted about, and rubbed his drool-covered face on Nick's shoulder.

"Ugh, Jesus!"

He pushed the teenager off of him.

"God, you're gross," he mumbled.

There was laughter; he turned his head about until he saw Isaac and Sean, a few feet away, watching them.

"I told you. Didn't I tell you?" Sean said to the youngest, jabbing him with an elbow.

Terrence was rubbing at his face. "What's going on?"

"Never mind," Isaac was grinning. "Good morning!"

Nick shoved the blankets off and set his feet on the icy floor of the den, leaning over to gather up his socks from the mantle as Terrence tried to clarify what was happening through his post-waking confusion. Apparently there had been a long discussion about sleeping arrangements and how cold the room was.

"Aw, Nick, you were cuddling him like a _teddy bear_."

"Fuck you. It's cold," he grunted to the others as he laced his boots up.

"Excellent cover," Sean said, tossing him his hat.

Nick missed. He wasn't good at catching things- he hadn't gotten it down too well yet. It was hard when everything looked like it was two inches to the left of where it really was. Ellis had him practicing with a rubber ball on the cruise ship, but that was a long time ago.

"Good catch," Sean laughed again.

"I'm gonna stab you," Nick warned.

"I'll just stay on your left side."

Sean was going to be an ornery little shit today, that much was certain. Isaac was joining in on the fun, laughing only because he wanted to be in on everything. Even Terrence had chuckled a little.

They ate a pan full of oatmeal that had been found in the house's kitchen, Isaac carefully holding the pan over the fireplace while Nick stirred the ingredients together. It was a good, hot meal- a fair start to what Nick was sure was going to be a freezing cold, miserable day.

Dawn was just starting to show up when they'd woken, and when they left, the cold sunlight was peering over the treeline, brightening in the snow and making them squint. It had fallen a decent amount overnight; the steps they'd made yesterday coming inside were covered now.

Everything they saw and passed felt frozen in time, as a photograph or a painting. Nothing moved. There was no sound but their boots crunching in the snow. Every once in a while the snow melting under the sun on the tree boughs would get too heavy and collapse, taking down the rest of the snow on the tree as it went. These were the only sparks of life on an otherwise barren road.

When a tree branch snapped as a result of melting snow, Nick had raised the Steyr in an instant at the direction of the sound.

"Dude," Sean said. "It was the snow. Again."

He dropped the rifle. "It's too quiet out here."

Terrence seemed to enjoy it. Isaac, whenever he was actually keeping in pace with them, would try and start up random conversations about random subjects- usually about the comic books he'd read in that ranch house.

But nobody wanted to talk. They just wanted to hear the noises they'd become accustomed to- gunfire, zombies, and faraway explosions. Nick hated silence. He always had. It was never a good sign. He remembered when he and Rob had been attacked by a Tank, how quiet it had been. A shameful feeling swelled in his stomach as he remembered leaving Rob to the zombie. He hadn't known how important the stupid mutt was going to be, later on.

As if the act would absolve him, Nick called Rob over to pat him on the head.

The dog bounded through the snow as if it weren't there, tail wagging as his name was called. Something brown and mangled was in his mouth.

"Oh, ew, what is _that_?" Nick groaned.

The dog dropped it at his feet. It was a small rodent, and it was dead. Long dead.

"That is the most disgusting thing you've ever done, Rob."

Sean stepped up and pushed the rodent's body away with his foot. "I guess he's bringing it to us as a gift."

"Well, I don't want it." Nick gave the body a strong kick. It went spinning off into a nearby field, disappearing into the snow.

Rob dashed after it.

"Oh, hell _no_," Nick yelled. "I am not playing_ fetch _with a dead fucking chipmunk."

"It's a squirrel."

"What the fuck ever."

The dog came barreling back, corpse in his mouth.

"I am never going to touch you again," Nick spoke.

Rob dropped the squirrel at his feet and stepped back, waiting for him to throw it. Nick rolled his eyes and walked past, firmly reminding himself to never let the dog lick him again. The boys trailed after him, but Isaac continued to punt the dead body out into the snow for Rob to chase.

* * *

The road passed unseen under their feet. They halted every couple miles or so for a few minutes to drink- per Sean's orders. They'd gone through the bottled water already, and were now filling the bottles with snow to drink when it melted.

Nick wanted to gag every time he drank it, but as always, thirst won out over his immaterial worries about germs and viruses. Besides, if his body could harbor the Goddamn zombie apocalypse virus without killing him, he was sure he could take on a common cold.

"Don't hog it all, Terry," Isaac whined, waiting for his turn to drink.

"There's plenty of snow, Izzy," the eldest said- the most words he'd spoken at the same time since the apartment, "we aren't going to run out any time soon."

"I know, but I have to wait for it to melt!"

Nick was wandering a little ways ahead. The trees had become sparse; the roads hilly, filled with dips and rises over a bare, expressionless stretch of land. He stepped up to one of the higher bumps and brought up the Steyr, gazing through the scope at the still horizon before them.

Snow. Trees. Snow. An overturned car- or something like it. He couldn't tell from the snow.

Nick lowered the gun, but then light glinting off of something in the distance grabbed his attention, and he raised it back to his eye.

There was something big out there- some strange long shape laying a few miles away. He turned the dials on the scope to adjust the settings, trying to see it more clearly. The object was masked by snowfall, unrecognizable. But it wasn't a building and it was much too large to be a car.

Then, he noticed something sticking up out of the ground nearby- angular and long.

A wing.

He was looking at a crashed plane.

Nick adjusted the scope back to a shorter range, then slung the rifle over his shoulder with the other gun. The boys were standing, waiting for his return. They hadn't bothered him for information as they'd done in the past. They'd simply left him alone. Nick felt a sense of appreciation, and that sharp pang of _whatever that feeling was_ that he had felt around Rochelle and the others.

"So what's up ahead, boss?" Sean asked, only a little sarcasm in his voice.

"An airplane."

Isaac's eyes nearly fell out of his head. "_What_?"

Nick shrugged. "It must have crashed. Let's check it out."

* * *

It was huge- a passenger jet, with the _DELTA_ symbol on the side with blue and red paint. The crash had happened over many miles. There were pieces jutting up out of the snow for thousands and thousands of feet in both directions. What Nick had seen was the largest piece still remaining- a large chunk of the fuselage, the cargo bay, and one landing wheel.

The cargo bay had opened and spilled its contents everywhere. Terrence had tripped on a suitcase buried in the snow as they closed the last few hundred feet. When he unzipped it, damp clothes and books fell out- and a gift-wrapped, vacuum-sealed collection of chocolate.

Nick smiled slightly. "Good find. Let's keep looking."

"No, Rob, you can't have chocolate," Terrence admonished, when the dog came around to see what he had. "Dogs can't eat chocolate."

Nick approached the opened hatch of the cargo bay, which, due to the angle the plane had crashed at, was sticking a ways into the air. Nick stretched up to try to reach it. He wasn't a short man, but even on the tips of his toes he could barely get his fingers over the lip of the opening.

"Hey, pick me up," Isaac asked. "I can get in there."

He weighed his options. "You can't ask me for a piggy-back ride later. This is just for the stuff in the plane, got it?"

The little boy looked offended. "I wasn't gonna ask. I know I'm slow, but I'm not gonna need a _ride_."

Nick bent down and Isaac scrambled onto his shoulders. He was barely heavier than the guns and duffel he'd been packing around since the Hummer died.

Sean and Terrence watched from a few feet behind him, digging into another suitcase.

"Can you get up there?" Nick grunted as Isaac fumbled about.

"Just a bit more."

"That's as high as I can go."

"Maybe if I-"

"No. Don't climb on my neck."

Isaac had his hands on the cargo bay floor. "Okay, just boost me up, then!"

Nick pushed the kid's legs until he disappeared over the edge.

"You got it?" he called up.

"Yeah," Isaac's voice was small. "I'll try and push the rest of this stuff out."

Out came suitcase after suitcase- dusty and damp, but intact. Sean and Terrence dug into them like wild animals on a kill, tossing aside the useless items like a beast would to the bones. Rob hovered about nearby, as if he were to find scraps of food amongst the clothing and random junk.

It took a while, but eventually Isaac pushed the last one out with a soft grunt.

"Okay, I think that's it," he panted.

"All right. Come down now, you can help us go through it."

Isaac sat down on the edge and dangled his feet over. "Um, this is kind of high up."

Nick sighed. "Not really. Just jump down. You'll be fine."

"I have acrophobia."

"_What_?"

Sean scoffed from the pile of suitcases. "It means he's afraid of heights, Nick."

"I know what it means, Sean."

Isaac kicked his legs. "What if I break my ankles?"

"Seriously. Izzy. It's _eight feet_."

"That's twice my height!"

"I jumped off a bridge once. Probably about seventy feet. Look at me. I'm fine."

Again, Sean spoke.

"Oh, don't lie to make him feel better, Nick."

"It's true." He turned and glared at him. "And I don't need any comments from the peanut gallery, thanks."

Terrence laughed.

It had been a while since he'd heard that sound.

"Izzy," Nick continued, "just come down."

"Catch me."

"What? Fuck off."

"Please?"

"No."

"_Please_."

"No!"

"_Niiick._"

"Don't take that tone with me."

"Okay, I'm jumping."

"Good. Just jump."

"But catch me, okay?"

"I already told you-"

Isaac dropped out of the cargo bay, and Nick, scared that Isaac was _expecting_ him to catch him, lurched forward to grab him.

A half an hour later, he was still rubbing his sore ass where he'd landed when the boy knocked him off his feet.

"Thanks for breaking my fall, Nick."

* * *

In the end, they came away from the crashed Delta plane with a decent amount of food and some spare clothes, some other trivial things that the boys begged to take along with them.

"Too bad there weren't any guns," Sean complained as they walked away from the crash site.

Nick rolled his eyes. "You can't travel on a plane with a gun, you idiot."

"Really?"

"Have you ever even _been _on a plane?"

"No. Have you?"

"Plenty of times, yeah."

Terrence actually contributed to the conversation. "Yeah, they are- they _were_- really strict about that sort of stuff. Terrorism and all that, you know."

"Oh!" Isaac piped up from a ways in the back. "What if this zombie thing is terrorism?"

"Like, what, a biological attack?" Nick asked, looking over his shoulder at them.

"Yeah! It could be that! Maybe Europe and all those places are all fine! What if they're just going about their business? Do you think they know what happened?"

Sean shrugged. "Who knows how far it's gone. Maybe it's there, maybe it isn't."

Nick thought back to the cruise ship- as much as he didn't want to- and tried to remember what he'd learned from the military. He hadn't been too keen on speaking to them, that was a clear memory. Actually, he hadn't been too keen on speaking to anyone, at least for the first two weeks or so. Losing half your face could do that to a person.

He settled on what he thought was the most correct. "I heard it's everywhere."

"Europe, too?"

"Yeah, Europe too."

"What about, uh, France?"

"Isaac, France is _part of Europe_."

The little boy tripped on his feet a bit. "Ugh! I sucked in History class."

Sean laughed. "I think that would be Geography."

"That, too."

Nick felt a heaviness in his chest. None of them would go to college, get married, have kids of their own. Well, the last one he supposed was still possible, if he didn't fuck it up and get them all killed. Nick thought back to Christopher and Amanda, to Gregory, and prayed his relationship with the boys wouldn't end the same way.

But they were carriers, like him, and they weren't crazy.

At least he didn't have to worry about infecting them.

They were quiet behind him for a while, until Isaac's voice shouted out suddenly:

"Hey, Sean!"

Something cold and wet smacked into the back of Nick's head. A snowball. It spooked him more than anything, and he whirled around to see Isaac with the most terrified look on his face and Sean trying his hardest not to burst out laughing. Terrence just smirked, a diluted version of his normal expression.

"What. The _fuck_."

Isaac pulled on his ski mask, trying to hide his own face. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I was aiming for Sean, I promise!"

Nick glared. "Don't do that. Ever again."

"Okay, okay, okay," Isaac repeated rapidly, nodding. "I won't, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"You'd better be." He turned away and started walking again. The snow was just high enough to let little bits fall into the tops of his boots and melt against his ankles and toes.

Rob wandered back and forth in a zig-zag pattern over the road, head down sometimes as he sniffed out strange new scents, and sometimes he would stare ahead with his small ears perked up and his tail waving slowly from side to side. Every few minutes he would gallop back to Nick, trot a circle around him or one of the boys, and then go back out into the untouched snow.

Nick looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue, with a few cotton-ball clouds spread out randomly. A picture of normalcy, of calm. He looked back out at the road. It seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. They had a couple more hours before nightfall, and there were plenty of cars on the road for them to take shelter in for the night. Hopefully they were unlocked, so-

"Yo, Nick!" Sean yelled.

"Uh? What's the-"

He turned to look and a snowball hit him in the face.

Time seemed to stop.

Nick slowly wiped the snow off himself. Isaac made a little squealing sound of fear or excitement. Sean was standing there with a shit-eating grin that was daring him to retaliate.

With patient, deliberate movements, he set his duffel bag down and placed the two rifles against it, careful to set them upright, to not let their barrels touch the snow. Then he straightened up and turned around.

Sean backed up a few feet, nervousness beginning to seep in past the smile.

"I hope you can run," Nick rumbled.

The boy turned on his heels and fled with a shriek, dropping his backpack to the snow. He went back through the trail they'd created on the road, and Nick sprinted after him, passing Isaac and Terrence, the latter of whom started laughing.

Nick caught up with Sean in seconds.

"Oh _shit_, _goddamn_ you're fast-"

He grabbed Sean by the scruff of his clothes and the boy tripped, dragging Nick down into the snow with him. The older man grabbed him by the arms. Rob came over and danced around them, barking in excitement.

"Aaaaah! _Aaaaah- oh God!_"

Nick pinned him to the ground and stuffed snow in his face.

"Mercy!" Sean cried, but he was laughing. "Mercy, mercy!"

"Do you give up? Do you?"

"Yes! Yes, I do!"

"Say you won't do it again," Nick said, ripping off Sean's hat and piling snow on his head, "and I'll let you up."

"I can't promise that!"

"Then I hope you like the color white!"

Sean squirmed and yelled. "White isn't a color! _White isn't a color_!"

"Fuck you, yeah it is!"

Terrence shouted out behind him:

"White is the presence of all colors!"

Nick looked at him. "What the fuck does that even _mean_?"

While he was distracted, Sean wriggled out of his grip, got to his feet, and took off running again. Nick didn't give chase; he got up and brushed the snow off of his pants. Sean kept outside his radius, hopping from foot to foot and shaking his head to clear it of flakes. Rob was still barking.

"Goddammit, Rob, shut up!"

The dog huffed, made a low noise, an almost-bark, and leaned against Nick's legs.

For the rest of the day, Sean took last in their procession.

When they found an old Dodge Ram van, they decided to bunk down in it for the night. It was cramped, but at least it wasn't cold- having that many bodies in so small a space helped with that.

Just as the night before, sleeping quarters were shared. Nick stopped complaining about having to be so close to another body and started enjoying the warmth.

Even though Terrence snored, and drooled, and muttered in his sleep a lot.

They traveled like this for a while, through snowy hills and wind-swept valleys, the five of them stalking through the silence of the world. Only once did they find living zombies. There were three, hidden in a small gas station. All the others were dead, most of them killed by exposure to cold rather than exposure to bullets.

Nick wasn't sure what was stronger: his hate of the cold or his liking of zombie-free territory.

Well, as long as he wasn't freezing his balls off when he went to sleep, he guessed the cold wasn't all _that _bad.

* * *

They walked for a whole week, sleeping in cars or buildings- whichever was closest that gave the most protection from the ice and snow. By the end of most days the younger two boys were so exhausted they didn't even eat before nodding off. Food was scarce, and they always seemed to be just barely floating above the fine line between a single meal and no food at all. Nick ate as little as he could without wanting to die from hunger pains, and pushed the rest upon the boys. He saw them worry about him. He didn't care.

On the eighth morning after abandoning the dead Hummer, they came upon a town. The welcoming sign could no longer be read- it had been painted over with broad strokes of blue paint that said only, '_POPULATION: ZOMBIES.'_

"Think there's people in there?" Terrence asked. He'd brought up his shotgun. Whatever he'd had to work out in his mind after the encounter in the apartment was still stewing there, on his face, but the life had come back to his voice at least, and his usual smile had reverted to being more genuine.

"I have a theory," Sean said, "that exactly one percent of the population of any area are carriers like us."

"I think the number's a little smaller than that," Nick put in. He handed Isaac the hunting rifle and grabbed his own. "We're gonna be seeing zombies in here. Keep your guns ready."

"How can you tell?"

"Look at that. This town's pretty big. Chances are there's still a few kicking around in here."

Rob trotted ahead, sniffing the air. He knew.

Sean held his pistol in both hands. "Keep your eyes peeled." He paused. "Sorry, Nick. _Eye._"

Nick shoved him and walked ahead.

A noise echoed to them from one of the buildings down the street. It was a howling, hysteric laugh that sounded like it was coming through the vocal cords of a dying animal.

Wow. He hadn't seen a Jockey in _ages._

"Great," Isaac breathed behind him. "A Hyena."

Nick was staring into the scope of the Steyr. He scoffed. "What the hell kind of name is that?" He scanned the area in front of them, waiting for it to appear. It was still laughing.

Isaac knelt down next to him with his hunting rifle. "What'd you call them?"

"...Jockeys."

"Pfft. That's so retarded," Sean said.

_There_ it was. Nick squeezed the trigger. He knew he'd hit it because it stumbled slightly, but then it saw them and zeroed in, galloping on all fours with a whooping howl. Keeping his eye down the scope, he pulled the bolt.

Isaac was firing on it.

"It won't go down!" he cried.

Nick shot again. Why the hell wasn't it _dying_? It kept giggling, plowing through the snow at them without slowing, even though it was bleeding all over the place.

Closer, closer.

Isaac began to backpedal.

The Steyr barked in his hands, and he heard the zombie yelp a bit in pain. It was something, but it was _still standing._

When it was only a few yards away and Nick was beginning to prepare himself for a tackle and a ride, Terrence drew up, pointed the shotgun towards its face, and pulled.

The Jockey's head came off, and its body twisted as it fell soundlessly to the snow.

"God, I hate that laughing," Terrence hissed.

"Jesus. Did you see that? How many times did you shoot it, Isaac?" Nick asked, checking the magazine of his rifle.

"Six. Seven times."

"Well, I shot four."

"Sean shot none," Terrence teased, elbowing the other teenager in the ribs.

"Screw you guys. I only have a pistol."

"Yeah, save it for the little zombies," Nick said, starting off again.

* * *

There weren't any 'little' zombies. Nick had thought that they would die off first, and all that would be left were the mutated ones- as it turns out, he was right. _Again._

"Oh, do you hear that? Scratch n' Sniff at five o'clock," Isaac spoke as they came through a public park.

"Okay, which one is that, again?" Nick asked, raising the scope to his eye to try and see it.

"It's the one that jumps around a lot."

"Well, a couple of them jump around a lot."

"The one that jumps on _you._ And it has all these claws and rips you to shreds!"

Nick couldn't see it. "A Hunter."

Sean scoffed again. "God, where did you come up with these _names_?"

"I didn't really have _time_ to think of any good ones," he growled in return. "I was stuck on top of a burning hotel in Savannah when all this happened."

"Savannah? Where's that?"

"Georgia."

He heard the Hunter shriek from somewhere above them- it sounded like it was coming from all around them- and raised the gun from his eye.

Sean screamed, short and fearful, and he whirled to see it on top of him, claws already ripping into his clothes. Nick raised the Steyr to fire-

Then Rob took over, grabbing the Hunter by one arm and dragging it away from the boy. The Hunter snarled in confusion or rage, lashing out at the dog. Rob shook his head back and forth with the Hunter's limb still in his jaws. There was a _crack_, and the zombie let out a high-pitched, pained noise. Dropping the Hunter's arm, the dog went in to finish it.

Nick went to Sean and tugged him to his feet, not even aware that he was shoving the kid behind him. He put himself between the boys and the zombie, Steyr ready, in case it got away from Rob.

It didn't. Nick hadn't really expected it to.

"Phew," Sean breathed when it lay noiseless and bleeding in the snow, "that was scary."

"You all right?" Nick asked.

"Yeah. Didn't know you cared."

"I don't," he corrected, lowering a hand to pat Rob on the head.

"Liar."

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to Kit, my beta-reader and adopted sister, and thanks to everyone who's reading this. I do hope you're enjoying it._

_This arc is closing soon; only a few more chapters left. It will all be downhill from there._

_Coming up next: The Guardian, Part I:_

_'_Nick gazed around at the movie posters and tall cardboard advertisements. Most of them were faded with age. A cartoon character stared at him from a high shelf, some kind of robot thing, the cardboard buckled and gray. It creeped him out.

He raised the Steyr and shot it down.

The boys jumped and yelped, looking over at him.

"Oh, Nick, you killed WALL-E!" Isaac wailed.'

_See you next time!)_


	19. The Guardian, Part I

Nick had never seen anything like the storm that fell on their heads that afternoon. The snowflakes were huge, swirling down from the sky in clumped groups, lowering visibility to almost nothing. He'd seen snow, yes, but never _this_ much. The storm made everything dark and silent - not to mention cold as _shit_ - and after a half-hour of walking in it, they decided to stop.

The closest thing to them was a movie theater. They floundered out of the deep snow and into the protected eaves of the box office. The glass doors were all broken, the lobby peppered with bodies and in disrepair, like every other place they'd ever been to.

Isaac dashed forward to the concessions stand, jumping over the counter tops to search behind them.

"Oh yeah! Oh _yeah!_" he cried suddenly after a minute.

Nick was inspecting a dead zombie. "What'd you find?"

"Candy!"

"_Candy_? Let me see."

He'd found an unopened shipping box full of various containers of sweets. Some of them Nick had never even heard of. Chocolate-covered gummy bears and chocolate chips with sprinkles. He took out a box of 'cookie dough' candies and turned it over to read.

"High fructose corn syrup, sugar, artificial flavors," he read out loud. "This sounds delicious."

Sean and Terrence were already eating a box each, sitting on the counter tops. Isaac chewed on his chocolate-covered gummy bears and played with the soda dispenser.

Nick gazed around at the movie posters and tall cardboard advertisements. Most of them were faded with age. A cartoon character stared at him from a high shelf, some kind of robot thing, the cardboard slightly buckled and gray. It creeped him out.

He raised the Steyr and shot it down.

The boys jumped and yelped, looking over at him.

"Oh, Nick, you killed WALL-E!" Isaac wailed.

"I didn't like it."

The youngest came over and picked up the piece of trash, placing it upright. The cartoon looked even creepier now, with half of its 'face' blasted off. Isaac brushed off the dust and grime that had collected on the paper and tried to fold the remainder of the cardboard back together to make the character's image whole again.

Nick wandered away into the theaters, Rob at his heels. The light from the lobby only reached so far into the corridors. He walked to the edge of the shadows and turned his flashlight on, flicking it around to see what he could find. The voices of the boys echoed to him.

"I hated that movie."

"Yeah, it was totally boring."

He pushed open the door to one of the theaters with his shoulder and pointed the flashlight into the dark space. The seats rose up to his left. He could see the movie screen, half-ripped on the far end of the room. The thick sickly-sweet smell of rot wafted to his nose. As he wandered inside, Rob trotted ahead, his nails clicking loudly on the linoleum.

Nick found some bodies around the upper part of the seats, badly decomposed. He passed them to walk the length of the row, and his boots crackled on sticky residue.

A scratching noise across the way alerted him, and he whipped the flashlight over to look. Rob lifted his head and growled.

"Hello?"

Nick stared into the dark. The emergency exit was tightly shut. Were the curtains next to the movie screen waving, or was that his imagination?

He began down the steps to the front of the theater. Rob trotted ahead, hackles raised up stiffly.

The noise came again, like someone running a knife over wood. Nick tilted his head in curiosity.

"Anyone there?"

Rob got to the curtains first, sticking his nose around them. He made little huffing growls as Nick approached.

But when he pulled the curtain away, all he saw was a dark wall. He looked down behind the rest of the curtain, and there was nothing.

"Huh," he muttered.

Rob trotted down the aisle and back up, then wagged his tail.

"Okay, I guess it was nothing," Nick said, although he doubted it. Might have been a zombie trying to get in through the emergency exit, or a rat or something scratching behind the walls. Whatever it was, it didn't seem like an immediate threat.

He returned toward the hallway, passing into the dull light of the lobby.

The little robot cardboard cutout leaned around the corner and waved around.

"_Ohhh. Niiick, I'm the ghooost of WALL-E, come to seek my vengeaaance!_"

"I hope there's nobody holding that thing up, 'cause I'm about to shoot it."

"Oh, shit." Terrence came around the corner and threw the cardboard on the ground. Rob ran over to investigate. "Haha, Nick. Do you have a fear of robots?"

Hearing the teenager laughing and joking around again far outweighed his irritation, and he sighed. "No, just... creeps me out." He picked the cardboard up and placed it in an already overstuffed trash can. "Kiddy stuff, you know. Seeing it now... just... weird, I guess."

"Ah, I see." Terrence came around and walked backwards in front of him. He steepled his fingers on his chin and put on a terribly fake German accent, like a therapist. "Tell me about your childhood, Nicholas."

"I didn't have one."

"Yeah," Sean put in as they drifted toward the concessions stand, where he was trying to get the popcorn machine to work. "He teleported into life just the way he looks now."

Nick glared. "No. I just didn't have one. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out."

"Oh, but you're so _happy_ and _well-adjusted._"

"Pfft. Whatever." He leaned back against the counter and grabbed himself a box of candy. _Buncha Crunch_, it said. He opened it and found chocolate. "I'm sure this is going to taste awesome."

"Oh, you should try the gummy worms," Isaac said. He was across the way, at the claw machine, trying to stick his arm up through the prize hole to get at the toys inside. "They're really good."

The candy was so sweet he almost wanted to gag, but it was calories, and he needed them.

A loud clatter drew his attention to the storage room behind the counter. Sean was digging around inside, tossing brooms and mops to the floor.

"What are you doing?" Nick asked, pouring more chocolate bits into one hand. He barely noticed that his fingers were filthy with gunpowder and blood. A year ago, he might have vomited at the sight.

"I'm looking for some popcorn."

"Popcorn?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell are you gonna pop it with?"

Sean poked his head around the door. "I haven't figured that out yet."

Nick crumpled up the empty box and tossed it down, then pulled himself over the counter to see what was in the storage closet. Sean was digging through some cardboard boxes full of worker uniforms and cleaning supplies. It looked like the closet had already been looted, long ago.

Isaac grunted from the lobby. "Ugh. Terry, my arm's stuck."

He heard the eldest start to laugh. "Why didn't you just shoot out the glass?"

"I didn't think of _that_..."

Sean sighed and straightened up, dusting his hands off on his pants.

"Find anything?" Nick asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

"Nope. Guess it's back to cans of beans for us."

He came out back behind the counter and saw Terrence and Isaac still messing with the claw machine. The snow was falling heavily outside, making it darker than it actually was, but soon night would fall and they wouldn't be able to see anything. The wind kicked up, blowing the snow sideways, pushing it in thin sheets over the lobby floor.

Sean walked up beside him. "Gosh, I hope we don't get snowed in here."

Nick nodded. "Let's do a sweep, huh? Before we start a fire and get cozy."

* * *

They went, all five of them this time. It was a large building - the advertisements outside boasted twelve theaters, six on each side of the lobby, spread out over two floors. It was going to take a while. They started on the east wing, where Nick had gone first. The cavernous rooms were devoid of life, pitch-black, filled with a stuffy silence. Trash littered the floors, bodies on the seats and stairs. There was nothing of value to be found.

When they were done with the bottom floor of the east wing, they ascended the stairs to the top. The high, flat roof windows were still intact, covered in snow. The only light came from the flashlights on their guns, bobbing through the dark like stars in space.

"Oof. Izzy, don't stop so suddenly like that. I can't see anything."

"Sorry, Terry."

Everyone was speaking quietly, as if shouting would bring an avalanche down upon their heads. They reached the top of the stairs and onto a balcony of sorts. Nick went to the edge and pointed the flashlight down - underneath them was the lobby.

"God, it got dark fast. Can't even see outside anymore."

Terrence came up beside him, on his good side. "Maybe we could stay in a theater. The wind won't get us in there." Nick could hear the smile in his voice, even though he couldn't see it. "I could do some hand-puppets for you guys. And I bet Isaac knows the Star Wars movies by heart."

"I'm gonna slap you silly, Terry," Isaac threatened in his tiny voice.

Nick laughed. "Oh, wow. Yeah. You're real scary, Izzy."

"Hey! I'm tougher than I look!"

"You are," Nick agreed, "but you're shorter than shit."

"Over here." Sean's flashlight flicked about ahead of them. "Here's the next theater, guys. Check out the poster." He shined it on the large wooden frame. A trio of actors stood on a faded orange background, faces covered in false smiles. "'_My One And Only_'. Looks like crap."

Terrence spoke quickly, voice lilted in preparation for a joke. "Guess what? I bet it was so bad, everyone in that theater is _dead_."

Rob trotted ahead and scratched at the door, his chest letting out a low huff.

Nick and the others stopped. They all knew what it meant.

"Well, there's _something_ alive in there," Sean said, humor dropping out of his voice.

On the door, there were hand prints painted from faded brown blood, but there was a new red stain on the carpet below. Nick touched the door handle - it was covered in a red and dark-green substance, thick and putrid.

The boys stood behind him. He held out his hand to show them. "This is fresh," he said.

"Great," Terrence breathed nervously. "I was kinda hoping this place would be empty."

Nick wiped his hand off on the wall, and clicked the safety off of his rifle. "Sean, open the door. I'll go first."

"You sure? I-"

"Just open it."

The teenager crept forward and pulled it open. Nick pointed the light into the yawning maw of the theater. Seats rose up on their right, a flat wall to the left. More blood on the carpet beneath them, bright red. There were shoe prints, too, and more green bile. It looked and smelled like Boomer puke. Hadn't seen one of those in a while.

Letting out a breath, Nick stepped inside. The boys crowded behind him. Rob walked ahead a few yards, then stopped. He was growling.

With cautious steps, he walked the length of the corridor between the wall and the stairs. He swept the flashlight slowly from side-to-side, following the trail of blood around the corner and into the theater seats. There was something between two of the rows; a body.

It was moving.

"Hey!" Nick called out. "Hello?"

He could hear labored, whistling breathing. Breaking off from the boys, he stepped in between the seats and bent down.

"Sean, come here. This guy's hurt."

Nick carefully turned him over. It was a middle-aged man, another survivor, eyes fluttering rapidly. His chest was torn all to hell, deep gashes that were much to small to be from a Witch. A Hunter had gotten him, Nick realized.

Anxiety settled somewhere in his spine.

"Oh, jeez," Sean breathed when he saw the man. "God, this looks bad." He squeezed in next to Nick and felt for a pulse. Terrence and Isaac stayed back out of the seats. Rob kept with them. He was still growling.

"Hey, guy, wake up," Sean said. "Nick, he's lost a lot of blood."

The man made a gasping, gurgling noise, eyes opening. He saw Sean, and Nick, and shook his head wildly, raising his hands as if to protect himself from them.

"Calm down. We're trying to help you," Nick spoke to him.

"No- _no_ -" the stranger moaned, "- not here. Don't be here."

"What?"

"Go- go 'way. _Get away_!" The man shrieked, and then, with a rattling exhalation of breath, he lay still and silent.

The anxiety got worse. It swam from his spine to his stomach, cold and heavy. Nick turned back to Terrence and Isaac, feeling his throat start to go dry. His mind clicked it together, but not quickly enough.

There was no dead Hunter nearby, and a Hunter should have finished the job it started on this survivor, not left him to die on his own.

The trail of blood had been caused by someone _dragging_ a body, not someone walking. They had been _meant_ to follow it.

By the time he opened his mouth to say something, it was too late.

A scraping clatter came from high above them. Isaac shouted in fear, followed by Terrence. Their flashlights whipped around crazily, both trying to find the source of the noise. Nick got to his feet, raising the Steyr, Sean doing the same with his pistol.

On the edge of his own light, Nick thought he saw an arm, but then it was gone. He couldn't see anything; everyone's lights were going in different directions. The ceiling, the seats, the projection booth.

Then, Isaac shrieked. It was a high, terrified noise. His light went out. Nick had never felt such a powerful surge of fear before - he lurched instinctively toward the kid, lifting his Steyr -

There was a Hunter on top of Isaac, swinging its claws in a harsh, wide arc. Rob was there, already, leaping at the zombie's face. Nick saw the Hunter lash out viciously at the dog, catching him along the neck and ear, faster than he'd _ever _seen a zombie move.

Rob yelped, a horrifying, painful sound that Nick had never heard from his dog before. His heart jumped up to the back of his throat - he couldn't fire, he'd more than likely miss, so he came in with the butt end of the Steyr and cracked it as hard as he could into the back of the Hunter's head.

As it whirled at him with a short snarl of rage, he heard Terrence screaming in terror behind him.

"It's on me! _It's on me_!" he cried.

Two. There were two. At least. Sean shouted something, but it didn't sound like he was in pain. The pistol was going off, its muzzle's flare flashing like lightning.

Nick had about a half a second to move before the Hunter he'd bashed with his rifle attacked him, leaping up with a deafening snarl. It swung out at him with an inhuman speed, and he stumbled backwards, trying to avoid getting slashed. There was no space for him to use the rifle, not enough time to even fire it. The zombie was already on top of him, shrieking loudly; it pushed him against the chairs and he used the gun as a desperate shield against its claws.

Terrence was shrieking, "_Help me, help me, oh God, help!_"

The Hunter gave Nick no leeway, no space to defend himself. Nick tried to shove it away, fumbling in the dark. Instead of backing off, as a Hunter normally would, it went with his strike, wrapping its claws around the gun and throwing them both to the ground between the rows. It tugged the gun out of his grip - _took the gun right out of his goddamn hands -_ and pinned him, claws digging past the fabric of his jacket and into the flesh of his arms. They felt like needles.

Somewhere he heard the Steyr clattering to the ground. That was how fast the Hunter had attacked.

"_Terry! Terry!_" Sean howled, loud and terrified.

Nick bucked, shouting for help, panic gripping him. The zombie had taken him down like he was _nothing_, now sitting on top of his diaphragm, he couldn't _breathe_, he couldn't _see_, and it was going to _rip out his throat -  
_

He heard a snarl, thought it might be the second, or even a third Hunter, but it was Rob. The dog attacked again, although he couldn't see him, he heard the Hunter make a high noise of pain. The weight came off his chest and he could breathe again. Rob and the Hunter were both making vicious noises, roars and snarls. There were high-pitched yelps, too, but he couldn't tell which one was doing it.

Nick saw a flashlight nearby, on the floor. It was still attached to Isaac's hunting rifle.

Sean shouted in the dark, "My clip's empty!"

He dove for the rifle and lifted it toward Sean's voice. Terrence was on the ground, the other Hunter on top of him, no more than a few feet away. Nick pulled the trigger, reflexively. There was no time for him to even try to aim. He scored a couple of hits, the others landing in the wall nearby. The Hunter took the bullets in the way that Tanks took bullets. They didn't seem to hurt it, but Nick knew it could feel it, because it stopped what it was doing and focused on him instead.

"Get off him, you _fuck_!"

The Hunter forgot about the kid and turned toward him.

"Yeah, come here! I'm enough for all of you!" he shouted, not entirely sure what he was saying or why.

It came at him, on all fours like a jungle cat; Nick could see Sean going to help Terrence. The oldest was still moving. That was good. He backpedaled, into another row, keeping the light on the zombie. The Hunter leapt up onto the backs of the seats and used them as a springboard to close the last bit of distance. Nick fired twice - after that, the magazine was dry.

The Hunter landed upon him on all fours. He felt teeth sink into his arm, felt the hard floor slam unforgivingly into his back and his head. Stars exploded in his vision; the only light he could see. There were claws digging into his throat, another set raking fire across his torso.

This was it.

He was going to die.

_A trap_, he thought, distantly. _They actually set a _trap.

And he'd walked right into it, just like he'd walked right into that apartment.

Only this time, they weren't so lucky.

Nick heard a low noise, and saw light - oh God, he really had died, _what the fuck_, Heaven wasn't supposed to be real and it definitely wasn't for him -

Sean's voice yelled something, and the low noise became the discharge of a shotgun, the light became muzzle flare blooming out from the gun's barrel, and the Hunter came off of him. The shotgun went off again and again, and the magazine was emptied before the Hunter finally went silent and made a squelching sound as it hit the ground next to him.

"Oh God," he heard Sean saying. "Jesus, Nick."

"Where's Isaac?" he asked immediately. "Is Isaac okay?"

"Shine the light over here, I can't see anything."

"Izzy," Nick pressed. "It had him. The Hunter had him."

"Nick, just... just lay _still_, I'm trying to see -"

His brain fought with his body to get it to move, and he struggled into a sitting position. The ground tilted crazily beneath him. Sean's hands were at his shoulders, trying to keep him down, but he _had to know if the kid was okay -  
_

"Dammit, Nick!"

Impatience roughened Sean's voice. His hands went away, and Nick could see a flashlight pointing down at them, and since Sean didn't have one and Rob couldn't hold one, it had to be either Izzy or Terry -

Sean shoved him, hard, to the ground.

"Stop moving! You're going to bleed out!"

"Where's Rob?"

"Just shut up, Nick!" Sean turned to the trembling light. "Shine that into my pack, okay?" He dug into his medical kit, yanking out a plastic-wrapped syringe and vial.

Slowly, Nick began to realize that there was warmth on his chest, trickling down his stomach. With one hand, he reached up to figure out what it was. He touched sticky, hot blood and then what felt like a foot-long gash in his gut. It hadn't hurt until he touched it; now it blazed straight to the base of his skull, cutting his breath short. He made some sort of growling, pained noise, like a feral dog.

The teenager was talking to someone else, but he couldn't comprehend their muffled conversation. He tried to get up again and failed to even sit up.

Sean turned back toward him; he wasn't much more than a silhouette created by the flashlight. He approached with a full syringe in his hand, grabbing Nick's unhurt arm.

"I don't need that," Nick hissed, shying away from the needle.

"Yes, you do," Sean spoke, voice firm and dark. "It's diazepam. This will knock you out while I put you back together again, okay?"

"What? I don't want to be -"

"Shh. Stay still," Sean murmured, motioning to the holder of the flashlight. "On his arm, Terry."

Nick jerked his arm away, trying to tell him to stop, but Sean pinned his elbow to the floor with his knee. There was a tiny prick of pain, barely felt past all the other damage, and when he looked, Sean was already depressing the plunger of the syringe. He felt cold, suddenly, not on his skin but in his veins. _That's a funny sensation_, he thought, and then the drugs reached his brain and turned it off.

* * *

Nick had never taken diazepam before. He wasn't sure he liked it. He wasn't sure of anything, really, since he could only pin down one thing at a time, skipping from thought-to-thought sluggishly. After passing out on the floor of the theater, he'd come back around on the ground next to a fire with Sean bending over him, a penlight in his mouth and suture in his hands. There was dried blood from a cut on his forehead, and his eyebrows were drawn down tight in concentration. His eyes flicked around as he drew the suture up through what Nick assumed was one of the Hunter's gashes. He couldn't feel it.

He tried to say something and instead mumbled.

Sean started, glancing to his face, then took the penlight from his mouth and shined it in his good eye. The light buzzed across his mind, leaving a trail that he could still see, afterward. "Sorry," Sean said, and it sounded like he was underwater. "I might have miscalculated your dose." He said some other words but Nick couldn't pay attention. The ceiling was much more interesting. He stared at it for a while, a lifetime, seeing swirls of light and dark in the speckled paint.

"I think I'm hallucinating," he said, or tried to say, but his brain wasn't connected to his mouth anymore. He looked over and Sean wasn't next to him, he was bent down over someone else and turned away.

Nick must have made some sort of noise, because the teenager turned his head and looked at him.

"Go to sleep, big guy," he heard, and he tried his best to focus on what was being said next, "it'll wear off. I'm real sorry. I just didn't want you to run around like a..."

He lost interest.

Nick felt a yawn coming on, but he shut his eyes and slipped back into sleep instead.

* * *

"Hey, Nick. You with us, now?"

Sean was bent back over him again, a small, reassuring smile on his face.

"Above the influence, Nick."

He pushed himself up to a sitting position. There was a strange tightness on some of the skin on his arm, his collarbone, his torso. Reaching up, he felt rough stitches. It didn't hurt; actually, he felt a bit numb. He knew that was going to change soon.

Sean was still there. He patted him lightly on the cheek.

"Hey, buddy. Got all your functions back?"

Nick raised his eyes and stared at him. The memory of the Hunter attack and the time after it felt like one long black tunnel. Had that really happened? It felt surreal, detached from this reality. He glanced over and saw Isaac laying on the ground, eyes shut. Terrence was leaning against the wall nearby, Rob's head in his lap. Rob wasn't moving, either. They were in the hallway of the movie theater, on the upper floor, just outside the room they'd gotten attacked in. There was a fire going in one of the metal trash barrels nearby.

"You are way too stab-happy with your drugs, Sean," Nick mumbled, his tongue feeling awkward in his own mouth. He felt lightheaded. "I would've stayed still if all you wanted to do was stitch me up. Fuck."

An apologetic look came over Sean's face. "Sorry. It was all I could think to do. You were panicking."

"Was I?" Nick could barely remember it.

"Yeah."

"All right. Whatever." He rubbed his forehead. "Is everyone okay?" His throat was dry as dust.

Sean offered him one of the bottles of water. "So far so good," the teenager said. The wound on his face had been cleaned and bandaged. "Well, kind of. Isaac'll be okay, I think, and I know Terry will. I'm fine and I think you aren't gonna die, either, but if that zombie had cut you any deeper you wouldn't have a stomach anymore." He held out a hand and dropped about half a dozen pills into Nick's palm.

"What's this?"

"Ibuprofen and vitamin C."

Nick stuffed them into his mouth. "Why the vitamins?" he asked after he'd swallowed the whole bunch.

"I'm hoping it'll boost your immune system. I don't want all that stuff to get infected, and since we don't have antibiotics, this'll have to do for now." Sean's expression softened. "Nick, uh..." he swallowed, eyes searching the ground. "So Rob... Rob got hit pretty hard, back there. He's in bad shape."

Nick felt ill. He swallowed another mouthful of melted snow-water, gagged, swallowed again. Terrence looked over at them, eyes glazed with painkillers. A soft, distant smile was on his face.

With a hiss, Nick got to his feet and stumbled over to them. He sank back down to the floor next to his dog, feeling his heart drumming hard in his chest. His own pain felt like a distant thing.

Rob opened his eyes but did not lift his head, gazing plaintively at him. His left ear was completely gone, with matted blood all over his ruff and chest that had come from the wound. Superficial scratches lined his forelegs, his paws. He was panting, but his mouth was shut.

"Oh, God, Rob," Nick whispered. He reached out but was afraid to touch him, as if he were something fragile. "I'm so sorry."

The dog's eyes shut. He tucked his legs closer to himself, curling his tail around his back paws.

"What can we do, Sean?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure what I can give him. I tried to clean his ear at least, but he tried to bite me." The teenager crouched next to him on his haunches. "I don't know what to do, Nick. I'm sorry."

Terrence's eyes were closed. "He's a good dog," he muttered dreamily. He must have been given morphine.

"Yeah," Nick halfheartedly agreed, running a careful hand through the long fur on Rob's shoulders. There were no open wounds here that he could see, at least. "You did a good job," he told the dog quietly. "We're all still here because of you, you know that?"

Rob let out a huffing breath. His tail wagged up and down twice.

Nick scooted closer, trailing a shaky hand up to the dog's head. The left ear - or where the left ear _used_ to be - was all blood and hair. It wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was a terrible wound.

"Give me some gauze, Sean."

"You sure? He's gonna bite you, Nick."

"Let him. We need to get this clean."

Rob whined, sharp and loud, when Nick gently drew the gauze over the gaping hole in his head, but he did not try to bite. His tail was wagging for some reason, fast and low on the ground, while Nick tossed dirty gauze away and went for some more.

"Here, put this in it," Sean directed, handing him a long tube of antiseptic ointment.

The dog flinched away from the paste but Nick was able to get it on there, and he wondered if Rob could hear out of that side anymore.

"Should we try to bandage it?"

"I don't know. Would he try to take it off?"

Nick tried his hardest, wrapping it up around the dog's skull, but it didn't stay, and the tape wouldn't stick to the dirty fur. Rob shook it off anyway, laying his head down on his paws with a low, moaning whine.

"He let you clean it," Sean said, some kind of amazement in his voice.

"He trusts me."

"You've been with him a while, huh?"

"Yeah. He's..." Nick trailed off, unable to finish. Thoughts whirled around his mind, no longer muted by the drugs, returning with increased strength. Nick looked over and caught Sean's eye. "Do you think he's going to make it?"

"No, I don't," Sean said.

Nick's stomach rolled in fear. "Well... I appreciate the honesty." His eyes pricked with pain. Shame rushed through him when he realized he was going to cry. He slid over and leaned back against the wall on the other side of the dog, setting a hand down on one of his legs. Rob started a little, looking at him. "It's okay. I'm gonna sit with you, Rob. Lie down, now."

Nick wiped his eyes and stared into the fire.

The wind howled out in the dark.

* * *

_(A/N: So, remember how I said the arc only had a few chapters left? I lied. It's a little longer. Not by much, but still, longer than a few chapters. They turned out to have more words than I thought and I had to split them up accordingly.  
_

_Thanks to my beta-reader and squishy marshmallow, Kit, and thanks to all my reviewers and readers. And also, thanks to Yggi. Welcome back to the Internet.  
_

_Coming up next: The Guardian, Part II._

"Here," Sean said suddenly from in front of him. He was offering out a granola bar. "Eat this."

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care. You have to eat."

Nick glanced at the foil-wrapped bar, then back to Isaac's grocery bag. "What do we have left?"

Sean frowned. "Not much. The candy."

"Then you take it. I'll be fine."

"Nick." Sean let out a soft breath. "You're going to kill yourself, you know that?"

"At least you guys'll have more food."

_See you next time! I may post the next chapter on Christmas, just as a gift for all you awesome, patient people.)_


	20. The Guardian, Part II

"They set a trap."

"What?"

Nick removed his eyes from the flame and looked over to Sean. Rob had shifted about and placed his head on his leg, just above his knee. The dog was still breathing, at least. Terrence was now lying down next to Isaac, both sleeping off the worst of the pain.

"Those Hunters. They set a fucking trap for us."

The teenager twisted his mouth. "How smart are they _getting_?"

Nick sighed. "Smarter than us, obviously." His gut throbbed angrily, creating a drum-beat at the base of his skull. He winced to himself and willed the ibuprofen to start working faster.

It was still dark; the only light they had was coming from the fire in the trash can. Dawn had yet to come and see them. The snow was beginning to crawl further into the lobby, small drifts that collected amongst the broken glass. Nick couldn't see anything else down there, either because of the dark or because the snow had covered the doors entirely.

"This is a bad storm," Sean said when he followed Nick's gaze outside. "We could maybe... stay here a few days. 'Till we feel better. Maybe Rob... maybe we can get him back on his feet if we rest a while."

Nick looked back at the dog again, twisting his fingers in his fur. "We'll see."

The zombies were _still _mutating. Getting worse. Getting stronger, smarter, faster. Nick prayed the Tank hadn't gotten bigger. He thought about Witches, and felt nauseating fear. If one from before had only ripped his face off, what could they do _now_? And what about the others? If a Charger had previously been able to ram straight through a wooden barricade, could it now punch through concrete or steel?

It didn't seem physically possible, but then again, until a few months ago, neither did zombies.

"Here," Sean said suddenly from in front of him. He was offering out a granola bar. "Eat this."

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care. You have to eat."

Nick glanced at the foil-wrapped bar, then back to Isaac's grocery bag. "What do we have left?"

Sean frowned. "Not much. The candy."

"Then you take it. I'll be fine."

"Nick." Sean let out a soft breath. "You're going to kill yourself, you know that?"

"At least you guys'll have more food."

"Don't -" the teenager shook his head angrily, "- don't say things like that. What's wrong with you? I don't care if it's the last scrap. You _have_ to eat. We'll find something else." Sean was trying to give him a threatening glare, but there was exhaustion hanging dark around his eyes and he looked more pathetic than anything else. "Please," he eventually begged. "Just take it, Nick."

With a sigh, the older man relented, and took the offering. He opened it and chewed mechanically, the taste barely reaching him. The wrapper said it had 'honey' in it, but it just felt like he was grinding tree bark between his teeth. He wondered how many calories was in tree bark.

* * *

They were pretty wrecked. Isaac had gotten four long gashes and a few bites. Terrence's two coats had protected him from anything really serious, but he might have cracked a bone in his elbow from being pounced to the hard floor. He could barely lift his arm. Sean was the luckiest; he had only the cut on his forehead from a Hunter's passing swipe. And Rob... he didn't even want to _think_ about Rob.

Nick began to kick himself inwardly for drawing the zombies' attention to himself, until he got a good look at Isaac and realized if he _hadn't_, the little boy would have been killed for sure. He couldn't take Hunter attacks like Nick could. The deep slashes on Nick's gut would have _disemboweled_ the boy, and he would much rather live with pain for a few days than see the alternative.

What were a few more scars to him, anyway?

Needless to say, they weren't going anywhere for a while.

Rob lay with his head in Nick's lap for hours before finally lifting it when Isaac came near. The dog licked his hands and let him sit close. Isaac trailed his fingers gently down Rob's broad muzzle and cried with great heaving sobs. He laid down on his side next to the dog and that was where he stayed until dawn.

The light did come, although it seemed to take days, and it ultimately revealed that the storm was still going. Everything out the windows was pure white. Any buildings that they'd been able to see yesterday were now covered, and so were the steps they'd made coming in. The wind was kicking it up, creating great undulating drifts, although it was hard to see them because everything was _white_.

Terrence wandered downstairs into the lobby and tried to see out, but it was useless. He came back to them with a soft frown on his face. Nick knew it was a bad situation when even Terrence wasn't smiling.

"It's got to be, like, three feet of snow out there," he said, sitting cross-legged in front of them. Sean had placed his arm in a sling made from the lining of his second jacket.

"We can't go anywhere now," Nick spoke, looking down at Isaac and Rob. "We'll have to ride out the storm in here. I hope we have enough supplies."

"And no more zombies hiding inside," Terrence said, a weak joke in his tone.

"Don't jinx us," Sean grumbled, shoving him.

"Ow. Ow! My _arm_!"

"It's your _other side_, you big baby."

"Guys, be quiet. Rob's trying to sleep," Isaac hissed from the floor.

To Nick's surprise, both of them closed their mouths. They said nothing else, and neither did he, and neither did Isaac. They were each sitting in their own silence, waiting for what they all knew was the only way this situation could ever end.

* * *

Night came faster than anyone expected. It seemed that the daylight had only lasted a few hours at most before it became dark again. The wind started back up, blowing harshly into the lobby. Nick and Sean found an emergency fire axe in one hallway and used it to chop up one of the movie theater doors for fuel. They ate the movie theater candy- there was nothing else, besides a single can of condensed soup and the water. Afterward they huddled together close to the fire and tried not to think about tomorrow.

"Hey, guys," Terrence started quietly, "do you know what day it is?"

Nick was laying on his back with his hands under his head, eyes closed. He didn't open them. "No."

"I think," the eldest paused and sighed, "I think it might be Christmas."

"What?" Sean placed a few more long pieces of wood into the barrel. "Are you sure?"

"Well, we met Nick on the sixth of December, didn't we?" Terrence asked, and Sean nodded in confirmation. "Then we left D.C. nine days later. That would make it the fifteenth. We were out on the road for eight days, that makes twenty-three. This is going to be our second night here, so, December twenty-fifth. Christmas."

Nick sat up. The stitches tugged with a strange sensation on his chest and arm, and he concentrated on that rather than the pain. "I don't think Christmas matters anymore, guys."

"It does to _me_," Terrence said, softly. "I think we need to continue the tradition. Remember that there did used to be something better before this. Maybe someday, it'll be just as good."

Nick frowned. "That's stupid." He lay back down.

"Whatever, Nick, it's not my fault you had a crappy childhood," the teenager said, an unusual amount of acid in his tone.

"You think that's the reason I don't give a shit about Christmas? No, Terry, I don't give a shit because it's the end of the fucking world. Christmas _doesn't exist anymore_," he corrected. "Besides, what the hell are we gonna give each other? Hugs and kisses?"

"I dunno. I'm sure I'll figure something out," Terrence spoke thoughtfully.

They fell quiet again. Nick stared at the ceiling, listening to the crackling of the fire in the trash can, the slow, labored breathing of the dog a few feet away, and the wind shrieking softly outside. He wished he had a blanket or something, but Isaac was using one and Sean the other.

He thought suddenly of Rochelle and Coach and Ellis, wondering where they were, if they were all right. The longer he took, the further away they were getting. And who knew if they were still going to Maine? What if they'd changed their minds and gone back down south, or even westward?

The only thing he could do was follow the map, and hope he found them on the road there, or wherever that red 'X' lay. Every step that brought him closer could very well be in the wrong direction, but he had to take it. He had to find them. Hell if he was going to let them abandon him without reproach.

"Okay, I figured it out," Terrence spoke, turning toward him.

Nick turned his head and looked. "Figured out what?"

"Gifts. For Christmas."

"I can't wait to hear this."

Sean and Isaac looked on expectantly.

"Let's all gather up close and -"

"Nope. Not doing it," Nick immediately cut in. "You three can go have a little cuddle-fest all you want. Over there. On the other side of the fire."

"You are no fun at all," Terrence murmured, his face falling.

"Okay, fine," Nick groaned, and relented. "How about this." He raised himself up into a sitting position again with caution, leaning his elbows on his knees. "Each of you can ask me one question, and I'll answer truthfully. How does that sound? You're all nosy as hell, this should be perfect for you."

Now Terrence's face lit back up. "Okay," he said, scooting closer.

"Make it count," Nick said, clasping his hands in front of him, trying to glean more heat from the fire.

The eldest asked his immediately. "How old are you?"

"What? That's what you want to know, really?"

"Yeah."

"It's December, so I'm still thirty-five."

Terrence smiled. "My guess was going to be forty."

"I don't look _that_ old," Nick frowned. "Do I?"

"I think it might be the beard," the teenager said, scratching at his own scraggly peach fuzz. "Very dignified."

Nick rolled his eyes and when nobody said anything for a few moments, Isaac started to speak.

"Have you ever been in love?"

Nick blinked slowly. What an odd question. "Yes," he answered, "and no. I used to be married. A husband. Yeah, hard to believe, huh?" He paused at the looks on their faces and laughed without humor. "Here's a tip for you to remember: women are insane, over-emotional, manipulative creatures that will destroy your life if given the chance." He rubbed his fingers absently, remembering the rings he'd worn, and the wedding ring he'd once had. How useless those objects would be now. "But yes, Isaac, I did love her."

The little boy had come closer to him, absorbing every word. "Did you have any kids?"

"I said 'one question each,'" Nick spoke, shaking his head. "But here's a freebie: no. Could have been, but no."

Isaac looked a little sad.

Sean pulled his blanket closer around his chest. "I thought of mine."

"All right. Shoot."

"What happened? To your eye?" Sean motioned to the ruined half of Nick's face. "We already know it was a zombie, but..." The rest of the question did not need to be asked.

A cold chill settled in Nick's stomach. His throat went dry. "I..." -_ don't want to think about it -_ "...it was..." -_ the worst thing that's ever happened to me -_ "...an accident."

Sean looked on and nodded. His sharp eyes studied Nick's face. "Go on."

"I don't -" Nick let out a thin breath through his mouth, pinching the bridge of his nose, "- I don't remember much." _The bridge, the bridge, the bridge._ "We were in New Orleans. Ellis and Rochelle, Coach and I. Heard there was an evac there, to take us out of the United States, to safety. We'd gotten really far. Further than I thought we would."

They all stared at him. Isaac unconsciously twisted his fingers in Rob's fur.

Nick moved his gaze to the ground, unable to look at their curious, sad eyes. He tried his damnedest to fight back the memory, but it came anyway, and all he could do was try his best at describing it. "We, uh, went down through the city. Through New Orleans. Lots and lots of zombies. I had this rifle, big brown thing. Semi-auto. This long knife I found in the swamp. We went through this park, then some kind of... of containment center, I don't know. Where everyone went to evacuate at the start of all this bullshit.

"We ended up at this... this bridge." _He could still hear the river flowing underneath it._ "The army was on the other side, with this big helicopter. That was our evac. We talked to them on the radio and they told us to hurry to the other side, or they were gonna bomb the bridge, even with us on it." _He could still smell the mixed, acrid scent of burning things and gunpowder._ "So we ran for it, for the other side."

Nick let out a deep breath, ashamed at how shaky it sounded. He still didn't look up, although he was staring at his hands, now, folded tightly together. The fire popped, and he continued.

"It was one of those bridges that move up and down for boats to go underneath. Really big. I, uh, _we_ got almost to the other side. There was an off-ramp, I remember that. I remember seeing the helicopter." _He could still feel the wind from the rotors whipping at his hair and clothes._ "Coach, he was... he was in the lead. He's this really fucking huge black guy. You'd... you guys would like him.

"Well, he was moving toward the helicopter, shouting something, I can't remember what, and then this..." - _Witch, Witch, Witch Witch Witch - _"...Cryer came out from the other side of this bus. He ran right into her. I was the closest. I wasn't sure what I was thinking, but..."

_He could still see the fear on Coach's face and the fury on hers._

"...I stepped in. I shot her, and she went for me instead. I... I don't remember much after that. Except how much it hurt. And that I couldn't see. And that I was... that I knew I was going to die."

_He could still taste the blood in his mouth._

Sean cleared his throat. "What happened then?"

Nick continued quietly, lifting his gaze some more to stare at the fire. "I woke up on the cruise ship." _In a quarantine room, recovering from a gray pit of anesthesia, his face on fire and drugs pinning him to a hard gurney._ "One of the doctors there, he'd... he'd put me back together. I don't know how, or _why_ he did it, but... he did it. He never really talked to me. Come to think of it, I don't remember much about the rest of that day, either." Slowly, he turned his head until he was looking at them.

Terrence had the most sickening look of pity on his face that Nick had ever seen. "I'm so sorry," the kid said, shaking his head.

"Don't," Nick spoke, feeling sudden anger. "Don't say you're sorry. Don't you feel _sorry for me_, Terrence. It's happened, it's over. I'm just trying to work with what I've got left. Understand?"

Isaac was crying; Sean nudged him and shook his head.

Nick felt like he was going to puke. He fought back the feeling, like he tried to fight back the memories, and hugged himself for warmth. "So... that's it," he said, forcing strength into his voice. "I try to do something selfless for the first time in my stupid fucking life and this is what I get." He scoffed. "What a sob story, huh? Merry Christmas."

None of them spoke for a long time.

* * *

Nick stewed in the silence for a while, chewing absently at his cuticles, avoiding their eyes. He knew he'd see the pity there, and it was something he wasn't interested in. Sean and Terrence spoke in hushed whispers on the other side of the fire, a conversation he didn't pay attention to, while Isaac lay next to Rob again with the blanket over them both.

It was about an hour later when, with a grunt, Nick got to his feet. He picked up his Steyr and Isaac's empty grocery bag and started off down the stairs to the lower floor, hugging his abdomen with his free arm.

"Where are you going?" Sean asked.

"We need food," Nick muttered, not stopping.

"Don't go alone!"

"I'll be okay. Take care of Isaac and Terry."

"No, I'll go with you. Terry can watch Iz for now." Sean grabbed the shotgun and jogged after him. "I know you're excited to go and get yourself ripped up again on our behalf, Nick, but I'm running out of suture and you're running out of skin. Let me watch your back at least."

Nick turned without speaking and continued down the steps. He went to the other side of the building, where they hadn't yet ventured. The first trash can he found he tipped with his foot, and used the barrel of the rifle to spread out the contents all over the floor. Sean bent down and pushed through it.

"God, look at us. Digging into trash. This is fucking pathetic," Nick said.

"Survival is more important than pride," Sean whispered back, lifting up an unopened bag of potato chips. Nick knelt and opened the grocery bag, like a trick-or-treater at Halloween.

Together, they picked through every trash can in the hall. Most everything was rotten, but past wastefulness from the moviegoers gave them an advantage. They found a few unopened things; more chips and candies, mostly. The discarded popcorn was all shriveled and stale, and the oil used to make the butter-flavored topping had congealed on top.

Sean studied one for either dirt or blood, then stuffed it into his mouth.

"Don't eat that!" Nick barked.

The teenager looked at him, chewing slowly. He swallowed and rolled his tongue around in his mouth. "It's not so bad once you get past the consistency. And the taste." He gathered some up into his hands. "Try it, Nick."

Screwing up his face, he took a piece and stuck it in his mouth. It was like chewing on a rock. He didn't spit it out, though; kept working at it until it was a pasty grit before swallowing. "Gross." Nick's stomach turned and rolled, desperate for calories. "Give me some more."

They ate it together.

"Are you sure this is safe to eat?" Nick asked, taking a half-full bucket from another can.

"I have no idea," Sean said, coming over to get to some of his own. "Let's bring some to Terry and Izzy."

They gathered as much as they could of what hadn't been dirtied by the other trash. Nick secured the Steyr over his shoulder and ate as he walked. He couldn't believe how hungry he was.

"What's that?" the youngest boy asked as they approached the dwindling fire.

"Popcorn," Sean said, handing him a bucket. "It's old, but eat it. I think it's not too bad."

"Okay," Isaac agreed, and grabbed a handful.

Nick placed a few more pieces of wood into the fire. "C'mon, Sean. Let's see if we can't find anything else."

As he went to return to the theaters, Rob was trying to get up to follow. He whimpered when he finally got all four paws underneath him, his tail hanging down low.

"No, Rob. You _stay_," Nick commanded, pushing the dog's rear to make him lay back down again. "You don't have to follow me everywhere. Stay here. _Stay._"

Rob whimpered and lay his head on his paws. He began panting again, that worrying heavy breathing while still keeping his tongue in his mouth. Nick stared at his dog for a few long moments, until he was convinced Rob was not going to die there and now.

"Stay," he said, again, and turned back to Sean.

They went back to the corridor and went into the theaters, on the side they hadn't checked yet. This time they searched for suspicious things before strolling inside like they owned the place. No, the theater belonged to the zombies now. This whole town belonged to the zombies now. They had to be more careful.

Sean found a dead body in the seats. It must have once been a girl, since she had a large purse at her feet. He picked it up and pawed through it.

Nick was down in another aisle when he heard Sean let out a delighted laugh.

"Hey, look! Someone snuck food inside the theater."

The teenager held up a bag of trail mix. "Look how much is in here. There's jerky, too. This is awesome!"

Nick made his way over, forcing deep breaths into his lungs. His stomach felt like there were four knives slowly digging deeper into it. "Good find, Sean. That's gonna help a lot." He glanced around, flicking his flashlight and looking for large purses or backpacks like the kid had found. It hadn't even crossed his mind that the people of the past may have brought their own snacks with them. He hadn't been much of a moviegoer himself.

When they'd picked through the whole theater, Sean stopped and pointed his flashlight up at the projection booth. "I wonder how we get up there," he wondered aloud. "Think there's anything in there, Nick?"

"I don't know." He grit his teeth. It was really starting to hurt, now. "Let's go back to the others for a bit."

Sean immediately picked up on his discomfort. Like Nick, he was good at reading people, at hearing unsaid things in their voices. He supposed the kid's medical training and his own studies of people for the purpose of conning them were about the same thing. Knowing weaknesses and strengths.

As they made their way to the theater exit, Sean asked softly, "How badly is it hurting?"

"Pretty bad," Nick bit out, shoving the door open with a grunt.

Sean hurried to help him with it. "You want morphine?"

"I think I'll be okay. If I sit a while."

Sean sighed. "Well, all right. If you want it, just tell me. I'll give it to you."

* * *

Together, they wandered back to the upper floor and their makeshift camp. Nick lowered himself to the floor and leaned back against the wall, wrapping his arms around himself. Sean gave him a worried glance, then showed the other two the goods they'd found. There was excitement in their voices.

Despite the pounding agony below his sternum, Nick felt a slight smile come to his face. They were okay. They could last a while longer, a few more days at least. Hopefully long enough to start moving again. The longer they stayed in this movie theater, the harder it would be to pick themselves up and continue on.

Footsteps crackled on the linoleum a few feet in front of him. Nick opened his eyes, unaware that he'd even closed them.

Sean was there. He had a syringe.

"No," Nick said, shaking his head slowly. "Don't give me that shit."

"It's just a little bit," Sean spoke. "I don't want to watch you lay here and suffer all night."

"Just give me more Advil. I'll be fine."

The teenager had that stomach-turning look of pity on his face again. Nick groaned and looked away from him. Unfortunately, Sean must have mistaken it for a noise of pain, and, with his face set, he bent down and pulled the cap off the needle with his teeth.

Nick tried to shift away. "No. No. Please, Sean -"

He jabbed the needle in his thigh- through his jeans and everything- and injected, all in one sudden movement.

"_Fuck_! Dammit, I told you _no_!" Nick snarled.

On reflex, he slapped the kid right across the face.

The cap came out of Sean's mouth and fell soundlessly to the floor. He rocked back on his haunches, tears of pain and shock appearing in his eyes.

Isaac and Terrence stared at them, wide-eyed.

Nobody spoke.

Hot, nauseating shame rushed through Nick's body.

"Sean - God, I -"

The kid looked away. He bent down and found the syringe cap, carefully placing it back on the needle. Sniffing once, he stood up, walked to the other side of the camp, and tossed the syringe into the fire.

Nick stared at him, unable to bring up any words, only bile.

Sean cried silently on the other side of the fire and the other two trembled and did nothing. Rob lay on the floor, flat on his side. He whined. His breath was starting to rattle.

Nick crushed his palms into his eyes to hide the weakness there - hot tears that he could no longer suppress. He felt eyes on him, but he didn't care. He dragged in a shaking breath, and sobbed.

* * *

_(A/N: I know, I know, it's like, totally cheesy to post a chapter about Christmas on Christmas day, but I couldn't help myself. The timing was just too perfect. Thanks to my beta-reader and out-of-state traveler, Kit, and my friend Yggi, and also Sanima and Scoro - for playing online with me, and the user 'Can of Worms,' who left me a review on every single chapter of this fic. Huge, huge, _huge_ thanks to all my readers. I never thought this little fanfic would ever get this popular. I'm glad that others are enjoying reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.  
_

_Merry Christmas._

_I made a poll on my user page, just to see which character you like the most. I know two of them have not been introduced yet; they will be eventually. Try to vote on it, huh?  
_

_Coming up next: The Diplomat. Nick and Terrence make a discovery, while Sean discovers something about himself._

_EDIT 01-01-2011: I've changed the title and summary of the new chapter.)  
_


	21. The Diplomat

The morphine made Nick ill this time around. It was likely aided by the ingestion of the three-month-old popcorn earlier, which didn't matter much, because it all ended up back in the empty paper bucket. Nick heaved into it while Terrence crept close- he was the only one brave enough to approach him - and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked, softly.

"I'll tell you -" he gagged and spit, his stomach trying to eject contents it didn't have, "- when I stop puking."

Terrence crouched down quietly next to him. The other two were silent. Sean was glaring into the fire, steadfastly ignoring the older man puking just a few yards away. Isaac stared at the ground. Terrence didn't care who Nick had hit or why. There wasn't any reason to let him suffer on his own.

After a few long minutes of retching that brought up nothing but drool, Nick pushed the bucket as far away from him as he could get it while half-supine on the floor, then lay curled on his side, shaking.

Terrence took the bucket away, placing it into the theater, then came back and bent down close. "Oh, don't cry, Nick."

"I'm -" whenever he tried to speak, he started gagging again, "- not. I'm trying not - not to - throw up more. Don't wanna - wanna - rip out stitches." A faint, weak smile flashed across his face. "Not sure Sean would - would put me - back together again."

Across the fire, Sean snorted and rolled his eyes.

Terrence sat down, crossing his legs, reaching out to pat the man on the shoulder. "You need anything, big guy?"

"A w - a working left eye, and - and - and a space heater. Would be f - fantastic."

The teenager smirked. "You could always ask Santa."

Nick's eyes fluttered lazily as he rolled them. "He doesn't- give good things to- to bad people. Or exist."

Behind them, Rob fought to get all four paws under him. He limped over on three legs and lay next to his owner with a growling grunt. Nick absently dug his fingers into the dog's ruff and coughed.

"How's your stomach?" Terrence asked after a few more minutes.

"The outside, or - the inside?"

"Both, I guess."

"The inside feels like - the outside used to. Morphine just - switched their places." Nick pressed a palm into his good eye and let out a rattling sigh. "Fuck, I hate this."

"I know."

"First time in weeks I got - a full stomach and - barfed it up all over the place. Gross."

Terrence laughed softly. "There's more popcorn. And that stuff you guys found earlier."

Nick seemed to tire of speaking to him and replied with a grunt, which the teenager took as a hint to stop trying to hold a conversation. He had one of the blankets; he draped it gently over his own shoulders and across the man curled up in a ball next to him. Nick shut his eyes and absently ran his fingers through Rob's fur.

The trash can fire crackled and spit, casting their irregular shadows on the walls around them. Isaac sat without speaking, with his legs tucked up to his chest, and stared at the fire.

Terrence left the blanket with Nick and got up, crossing over to sit next to the little boy.

"Hey," he muttered. "You okay, Iz?"

"Yeah." The boy tucked his chin between his knees. "S'cold."

"Want the blanket?"

Isaac looked over at Nick, who had one, and Sean, who had the other, then shook his head. "No. I'll just stick near the fire." His quiet voice was hard to decipher, but Terrence had known him a long time, and considered himself an expert at listening to it. "I'll take first watch," he whispered next, although his face was dark and tired, making his eyes an unnaturally bright blue.

Terrence glanced at Sean, then back to Isaac. "I think you should sleep first, Iz."

The little boy squirmed a bit, then leaned in close to him. He turned his voice down lower, to hide what he were trying to say, but it was impossible to hear in the first place unless you were right next to him. "I don't want to make them mad," he muttered, looking at Sean, then Nick.

"They aren't mad at _you_," Terrence chuckled softly.

"I know, but..." the boy bit his lip and pressed his eyes against his kneecaps. "I'll just sleep here, okay?"

Across the way, Nick cleared his throat.

"All right, Isaac, come on," he spoke. His voice was hoarse but at least he'd stopped gagging.

The youngest climbed to his feet and made his way over, squeezing himself between Nick and Rob on the floor. He rolled over a couple times under the blanket, got comfortable on the man's arm, and lay still.

"Night, guys," Terrence spoke quietly.

They didn't answer.

He scooted over to Sean, who was taking stock of his medical supplies, pulling out the vials wrapped in socks and eyeballing what he had left in them. He said nothing to Terrence as he approached - he continued to work in silence. There was a light bruise on his cheek.

"Hi," Terrence whispered.

Sean grunted.

"Need any help?"

"No."

"Hungry?"

"No."

"Tired?"

Sean sighed and straightened his back out. "What do you want, Terry?"

"Just to talk."

"I don't want to talk."

Terrence shoved his hands into his lap, tilting his head. "You know, you and Nick are a lot alike."

The other teenager turned his head and glared. His voice was a vehement hiss. "I am _nothing_ like that man."

"Really? You could have fooled me. Both of you are stubborn as hell. And cranky -"

"Terry, you really don't want to go there right now, believe me -"

"- And smart. Without him, we'd all be dead in Washington. Without you..." Terrence met his eyes, keeping his voice a low whisper. "Without you, Sean, we'd all have been dead long before we even met him."

Sean narrowed his eyes. "Where are you going with this, Terry? Trying to make me feel better for getting whacked alongside the face?"

Terrence held up his hands. "Hey, he punched me in the _eye_."

"Not on purpose."

"He _has_ been saying he'd hit you for, what, weeks now?"

Sean frowned, and looked at the ground. He began stuffing his medical supplies back into their pack. "I was just trying to help him," he whispered.

"Maybe 'getting hit in the face' should be one of the side-effects. You should write that on the bottle."

Sean made a noise, a half-laugh, half-scoff. "Shut up, you douche."

Terrence grinned - proud he'd gotten the other to at least smile. It was tough to get Sean to laugh. He didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. He'd always been the serious one, even when they'd first met.

The wind blew through the lobby, making the flames shiver and crackle in the trash can.

"God, it sure is cold," Terrence said.

"Yeah. Get under this blanket. I don't want you to get hypothermia."

They huddled together underneath it. Across the way, Nick tugged Isaac closer to him and shivered. Rob lay next to him, head on his paws. He didn't seem affected by the cold.

Lucky bastard.

Terrence grabbed a bucket of popcorn and chewed idly at it. Neither of them spoke for a while, Sean only moving to place more wood in the fire or to walk a short circle around the camp - 'checking for zombies,' he said, but the eldest would have bet anything that he was observing the other two, making sure they were all right.

The hours passed. They were starting to tire out. It would be their turn to sleep soon.

"Wanna get them up?" Terrence eventually asked behind a yawn.

"Probably." Sean didn't get up. "You do it."

"Fine, fine."

He got to his feet and approached them. They were roughly in the same position they'd been in last, Isaac sandwiched between man and dog, and Nick's face tucked down under the blanket to keep it from the cold.

Terrence bent down and reached out to touch the man's shoulder.

He was awake in seconds, lifting his head from out of the blanket to blink owlishly in the firelight.

"Good morning," the teenager sing-songed quietly. "Ready to take your watch?"

"No," Nick grunted, but he was pushing himself into a sitting position anyway, leaving the blanket covering Isaac. He rubbed his eyes. "Okay, I'm up."

Terrence smiled and patted him on the shoulder, then returned to Sean and lay down with his head pillowed on his backpack. He heard the sound of Nick and Isaac speaking quietly to each other before the warmth and exhaustion caught up with him, and he fell asleep.

* * *

_It's called a captive bolt._

He was laying on a filthy floor in an even filthier apartment complex, sobbing into the carpet.

_A rod comes out right here._

_Punches a hole right into their skull._

There was cold, sharp pressure on his temple, crushing him to the ground, pushing so tight he couldn't breathe. He saw Isaac and Sean, dead on the ground, big holes in their heads. When he went to touch them they were cold and stiff, but their blood was bright and scalding hot. He looked over and saw Rob, too, laid out flat on his side, peaceful, legs bent slightly as if trotting across a sunlit field. The dog had no ears at all this time, just raw red flesh all up around his head.

When he turned again he saw Nick, and he was curled on the ground, dead. His other eye was gone.

_What did you see?_

He ran, but everything felt like it was in slow-motion, the horizon ahead of him stretching further and further away while he stumbled behind and struggled for each step.

_What did you see?_

_Terrence._

He ran.

_Terry._

The ground halted beneath him and he couldn't move his feet at all, when he turned his head he saw a huge zombie hurtling at him, it came from far away but traveled fast like a bullet, reaching him in seconds, raising its hands to crush him -

"_Terry!_"

The hands were on him, pushing him down, pinning him to the floor. _It's called a captive bolt. _He thrashed and screamed.

"Terry, calm the fuck down! It's me!"

And then, he woke up. He opened his eyes and saw Nick above him - he had both his eyes! - worry on his face. Nick's hands were on his arms, but they were gentle and firm, not forceful. Terrence looked wildly around; there was the trash can fire, Rob curled up tight next to it. Alive.

He turned his eyes back to Nick, taking in a deep breath.

It came back out as a sob.

"Jesus, Terry. You scared the shit out of me," Nick said, sounding out of breath and strained.

"I had a bad dream," the teenager whispered, plaintively, like a small child. He grasped at one of Nick's arms, sucking in more breath to let out as another, lower, wail. The feeling of the metal bolt against his skull was still there, heavy, cold. Terrence scratched angrily at his temple, willing the sensation to go away. Slowly, he pushed himself up from the floor.

"You okay?" Nick asked, sinking down next to him - a perfect mirror of what they'd done last night.

"Y - yeah. I think so. Sorry," Terrence mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"Jesus. I thought you were having a seizure." Nick pushed a hand through his hair, then rubbed at his face. Looking at him, the teenager came to realize the man looked worse now than he'd ever had - even than when they'd first met, with him bleeding out on a cold sidewalk. Exhaustion seemed to be pressing down on him, causing him to slump. His good eye was bloodshot and hazy. Had he always been so thin?

Nick caught his eye and sighed. "Stop looking at me like that."

Terrence nodded and stared at the ground. The nightmare had faded, like ash on a breeze, leaving him to shiver in the cold. He grabbed at the blanket on the ground and wrapped it around his shoulders. He blinked at the fire, then looked around.

"Uh... where's Sean and Izzy?"

"They went to try and find the projection booth." Nick got to his feet and went to feed the fire more of the theater door. "Thought there might be something in there."

"Are you sure they should be alone?"

"They've got my rifle and Isaac's. I told them to let off a shot if they needed us. Didn't want to leave you and Rob here without protection."

Terrence relaxed slightly. "All right."

Nick sat back down nearby and tugged his duffel bag to him. He unzipped it and started picking through its contents, setting aside the dwindling ammunition supply and a huge black flashlight.

"Got any Big Macs stashed away in there?"

"Yeah, I wish." He set aside a roll of electrical tape and a Swiss Army knife. "I was hoping I'd forgotten a bottle of pills or _something_ in here." Nick brought out the knife sharpener he'd found back in D.C. - it felt like years had passed between then and now - and set it down next to the pocketknife.

There wasn't really much in the bag. Most of the weight came from the bullets and the flashlight. When Nick got to the bottom, he let out a little scoff of surprise, and pulled out what looked like a huge gray cellphone.

"I thought I left this in D.C.," he muttered, wiping the screen with the sleeve of his jacket.

"What is that?" Terrence asked, scooting close.

"Satellite phone."

"Does it work?"

"It did when I found it," Nick said, hovering his thumb over the power button. "Think I should turn it on?"

"Who are you gonna call?" Terrence asked. "Did you ever get Rochelle's number?"

Nick smirked. "I was talking about the radio this thing has. Last time I listened to it, all that played was this looping message from the President."

"Oh, yeah. We had that in D.C., too. I bet it's still playing."

"What are you betting?"

"What? Me?"

Nick's eyes rolled. "No, the other sixteen-year-old carrier behind you. Yeah, Terry, you. If you want to bet, you need to put something up."

"Uh..." the teenager shifted under the blanket. "I bet... um... I bet another question!"

"If I win, what the hell am I gonna ask _you_? You never shut up. I could write a biography."

"Then, I'll, uh... I'll clean your gun for you."

"Hmm." Nick scratched his beard for a second, then nodded and stuck out his hand. "That's fair. Yeah, that would be nice. That rifle's a bitch to get apart."

Terrence shook his hand. His skin was cold, but his grip was firm. "Awesome."

Nick held up the satellite phone. "Okay, moment of truth. Let's see if I can remember how to do this." He pressed the power button. The screen flickered on, so bright it made them squint. A sequence of numbers and names scrolled up and down. Nick shuffled through the phone's digital menu until he found the three curved lines again. He highlighted it, and pressed 'connect.'

The speaker spat static, and then:

"_- West of Somerset. Thirty-three miles north of the I-40 and highway 281 intersection._"

Nick and Terrence looked at each other.

"That's not the..." the teenager started, but then he stopped, when Nick placed a finger over his lips.

It was a female voice, not terribly old, but not very young, either.

"_Please be aware that we are carriers. We will not take in anyone without immunity to the Flu. If you are military or suspected military, you will be shot on sight. If you exhibit any suspicious behavior upon approach, you will be shot on sight. Please approach slowly and with caution._"

"What is she talking about, Nick?"

"Shh. Shut up."

"_Again, this is Elaine McKibben. I am a survivor at Eight Springs Safe Zone in southern Pennsylvania. We are a fortified and well-stocked community with capacity for around three hundred people. To any survivor who can hear this: our gates are open to you. We offer shelter, food, water, and other basic amenities. We are located outside of Somerset, thirty-three miles north of the I-40 and highway 281 intersection._"

Nick dug into his back pocket and pulled out his road map, setting the satellite phone carefully on the ground. He unfolded the map next to it, fingers trailing to southern Pennsylvania.

"_This message repeats._"

It was quiet for a while. Nick chewed his lip.

"Come on, you said you were gonna repeat," he whispered.

There was a burst of static, and the woman's voice began again.

"_To anyone who can hear this: my name is Elaine McKibben. This message is being transmitted from Eight Springs, Pennsylvania, formerly Seven Springs resort. We are fortified and well-stocked with capacity for around three hundred people. At the time of this recording, there are nine of us. Our gates are open for any carrier or immune survivor. We are located outside of Somerset, thirty-three miles north of the I-40 and highway 281 intersection._"

Nick bent close to the map and found I-40, then highway 281, and pressed his thumbnail into where they met. Sure enough, a few inches away, was a town marked Somerset. There was no 'Seven Springs;' it was likely too small to be included on this map.

"_Please be aware that we are carriers. We will not take in anyone without immunity to the Flu. If you are military or suspected military, you will be shot on sight."_

"Another safe zone," Terrence spoke breathlessly. "There's other people out here, Nick -"

"..._This is Elaine McKibben. I am a survivor at Eight Springs Safe Zone in southern Pennsylvania. We are a fortified and well-stocked community with capacity for around three hundred people -_"

The radio sputtered, and the satellite phone's screen flickered.

"Oh, no, don't die on us, not _now_," Nick moaned, picking it up.

"-_ Our gates are open for any carrier or immune survivor. We are located outside of -_"

Static hissed in and out.

"-_ aware that we are carriers. We will not take in anyone -_"

Neither of them spoke, both trying to memorize the words being transmitted.

"-_ Eight Springs Safe Zone in southern -"_

The phone crackled for a few seconds, then the screen went black. Nick tried to turn it back on again, but it was dead. He took in a few deep breaths; Terrence could see his thoughts turning round rapidly in his head. His good eye searched the ground.

Eventually, he spoke. "I owe you a question," he muttered.

"What? Don't worry about that. Did you hear that lady, Nick? There's another safe zone out here!"

"Eight Springs," the man said, sitting on his feet. "I have no idea where the hell we are, but we're close enough to hear their message. It has to be short-range. I don't think anyone has the capacity to suppress that Presidential signal and broadcast at the same time."

"Okay, so that's - that's good, right?" Terrence got to his feet. "I gotta go get the others." His heart was a hummingbird in his chest. "I'll be right back, Nick." He went and thundered down the stairs, remembered he didn't have a flashlight, then climbed back up them.

Nick held out the huge black flashlight he'd pulled from his duffel bag before he'd even got there.

"Thanks."

"Don't break it."

Terrence grinned and went back downstairs.

* * *

When they returned, they stood around the fire, Nick explaining quietly what they'd heard over the radio. Isaac stared at him, jaw slowly dropping open further and further. Sean listened in silence, eyes narrowed, as if he believed they were lying about the transmission. Eventually, he spoke up.

"And they were broadcasting an _invitation_?" His tone was suspicious. "Are you sure it's not the military trying to round us all up into one spot?"

Nick blinked. "You think it's a trap?"

"I think it's pretty freaking possible. It'd be stupid to go chasing after it."

"You didn't hear the broadcast, Sean," Terrence offered. "She sounded pretty genuine. She said that there's only nine survivors where she's at. And warned military they'd open fire if they approached."

"Oh yeah? How're they gonna stop a tank - a sixty-ton tank - from rolling in and blowing them all to hell? I don't have a good feeling about this, you guys. At all."

"So, what? You'd rather take your chances here?" Nick crossed his arms. "That broadcast could be bait, but it could also be real. I'd rather get shot in the head than freeze to death in this goddamn movie theater."

Sean frowned. His eyes were still dark with uncertainty. "Well, I guess it doesn't matter what I say. You're gonna do what you want anyway, Nick, and just drag us all with you. Head-first into a bad situation."

Terrence glanced between the two of them, knowing what was going to happen next.

"You wanna stay here, you can fucking stay here," Nick growled, approaching Sean. At his full height, voice dampened with fatigue and good eye bright with anger - he became intimidating, something that the others weren't used to. "Trying for something that _might_ save us is a lot better than sitting here, waiting to die."

Sean shrank away marginally, but he did not back down. "Like you'd really leave me behind."

"Try me."

"Who'd put you back together again the next time you ran into zombies?"

"I'm sure I'd figure it out."

They stared at each other, neither backing down.

Isaac made a low wail.

"Please, stop fighting..." he whimpered, twisting his hands.

Nick was the one to relent. He relaxed slightly and turned away. A victorious grin crept across Sean's face, and Terrence stared. Had that been _sport_ for him? Or was he still angry because of the incident last night?

"Anyhow," Nick started again, avoiding Sean's eyes, "if we're going to be hunting down that signal and getting to Eight Springs, it's not going to be for a while. We've got to be able to walk first," he muttered, glancing down at his dog on the ground. He sighed. "But we can't stay long, either. We only have enough food for a couple more days."

"But..." Isaac piped up, "...what if Rob's not better by then?"

"I don't know," Nick said.

"We aren't going to leave him behind, right?"

Now the man wouldn't meet Isaac's eyes, either. His gaze defaulted to the fire, then down to the ground. He said nothing, but his silence was more than an answer for them.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-reader and heart-string manufacturer, Kit._

_In other news, I have a Deviantart account now. (disrupted-original dot deviantart dot com) Feel free to come and comment or whatever. I haven't posted anything yet but I have some nice fanart of Two Step in my favorites (thanks to Sydleys and Sanides for that!). I'm still debating whether or not to post this story on dA. FF.n has been its home for so long, and dA doesn't work well with my written files.  
_

_Coming up next: The Confidence Man. Nick and his companions strike back out into the world._

_I am going to try to update weekly from here on out. I am so slow. derp._

_EDIT 1-05-2011: Chapter had to be reuploaded. I'm not sure what the problem was, but some people could not view it.)  
_


	22. The Confidence Man

Another day passed.

Nick and Sean didn't speak to each other much in that time, until later that night, when the two of them were on watch. The man had pushed himself up against a wall, knees half-pulled to his chest, hugging his abdomen. He wasn't speaking, but Sean could see the muscle jumping in his jaw beneath the scruff as he grit his teeth. His eyes were tightly shut.

The clinical half of Sean's mind was worried, alarmed. But the other half - the half that caused him to backtalk, to always fight for the last word, and got him in more trouble than anything else - that part of his mind could care less. He sighed.

Sean mulled it over for a long time, watching the man sitting against the wall, posture rigid and unchanging. He didn't want to be sent away for trying to help, and he certainly did not want to be slapped in the face again. He'd never taken the Hippocratic Oath, but he knew it word-for-word.

How disappointed his mother would be if she saw him now, letting his companion suffer in silence because of a stupid argument. Because he couldn't keep his damn mouth shut.

With another long sigh, he turned and picked up his medical bag, then got up and walked quietly over to Nick.

"You okay?" he asked, careful to keep his tone neutral.

"Fucking fantastic," was Nick's reply. He didn't move, or open his eyes.

Sean crouched down, pulling out the bottle of ibuprofen. He shook it gently. "Here. Take some of these." Pouring a handful of them out into his palm, he placed them into Nick's, then handed him a bottle of water. "Come on, take them."

Obediently, he downed the pills, then went back to hugging his gut.

Sean studied him for a second, beginning to wonder if he had a fever. If he did, that meant the wounds were infected... and there was no way Sean would be able to fix that.

A sudden fear plunged into his stomach.

"Let me see those cuts," Sean ordered brusquely, trying to sound nonchalant instead of worried. He bent down close to study them, the dark suture trailing up in long, irregular lines across his abdomen. When he went to place a hand against them to feel for warmth - a telltale sign of infection - Nick hissed loudly and jerked underneath him.

"_Ow_," he said in a low, soft moan. "Stop touching them. God."

"I want to make sure they aren't infected," Sean explained, meeting Nick's eye for the first time since their argument yesterday. "They're getting a little swollen - suture's getting pulled too tight because of it. That's why it hurts so bad."

"Fucking _great_," the man muttered, tapping the back of his head on the wall behind him. "What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?"

Sean dug back into his bag and found an ACE bandage. "You're supposed to be taking ibuprofen - it's what helps keep the swelling down." He crept close with the bandage. "Stay still. I'm gonna wrap it up." He pulled the bandage tight, to use as a compress. Nick was biting his lip so hard it might bleed, fingers digging into his own arm so deep that his knuckles were white.

When Sean was done, he leaned back to get a look at his handiwork. "Good thing you're so skinny, Nick. That ACE wouldn't have worked so well." He went to place the bottle of ibuprofen back into his bag, then thought better of it, and left it sitting next to the man. "Take four. Every four hours. Don't forget."

"Uh-huh," Nick breathed, shutting his eyes again.

Caring for his gashes was a much easier way to apologize than actually saying it.

Sean went back to his side of the fire. He kept an eye on Nick as he leaned against the wall. As soon as the ibuprofen started working, the man fell asleep, still in the same sitting position. He continued to sleep after he got Terrence and Isaac up for their watch, and Sean had to wriggle in close to him to keep warm.

He hated having to share blankets.

* * *

"Come on, Rob. Up, Rob."

Nick sat on his knees in front of the dog, dangling a small sliver of beef jerky from one hand. Sean sat next to Terrence and watched. The ibuprofen had done its job, and the gift of a long night's sleep seemed to blow the life right back into him. Today, Nick was trying to coax Rob to his feet, trying to get him moving again.

"No, no, don't just snap for it. You gotta earn it. Up, boy."

Rob made that pathetic growling whine and stood up. His back left leg didn't touch the ground, but the other three seemed to work. He hobbled the short few feet to Nick's side and took the jerky from his hand, teeth snapping over it.

"Fuck, don't bite my fingers off."

Nick got another piece and walked further away, calling the dog again.

"Over here now. Come on, Rob."

Rob looked at him, then lay down.

"No! No, get back up. Get the fuck up."

He brought the jerky close so the dog could smell it, and again got him back on his feet.

The tear on the dog's head where an ear used to be had become one big black scab. It gave him a lopsided appearance when Nick whistled Rob over, and the dog pricked up the ear he had left.

When he reached his owner this time, his tail was wagging.

* * *

There was not much to eat that night. They were planning to leave the next day - they had to. There was nothing left in the movie theater to support them. Around the trash can fire, they huddled, passing around the final bit of trail mix. When it was gone, Sean looked dismally at the empty plastic bag, then threw it into the fire.

Nick leaned back against the wall. He was taking the Steyr apart - he'd done it once before, in that week out on the winter roads - to clean it, carefully detaching pieces and setting them down on an old rag to keep them together. Unlike Sean, he knew the inner workings of a firearm. The teenager was pretty sure he could take a gun apart, too, but he didn't think he could put it all back together again like Nick and Isaac could.

He watched while trying to look like he wasn't interested at all, but that failed completely, because Nick gave him a small glance and a knowing little smirk.

"Don't worry, Sean. I know what I'm doing."

Isaac came around to help him out, gingerly cleaning out the delicate mechanisms with an oiled rag and pipe cleaner that Nick kept in his duffel bag. Terrence was up, getting Rob to walk around the camp with him.

"We'll do your gun next, okay, Izzy?"

"Why is it so important?" Sean asked. "To clean them like that?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "So they don't misfire and end up blowing my arm off at the elbow?"

Isaac snorted in laughter.

Sean glared at him.

"Okay, kid. Think of it like... well, maybe a car. You gotta keep a car maintained, right? Change the oil, change the tires. Well, a gun's the same way." Nick detached a metal bar from the barrel- the part he jerked back after firing. "Do you even know what part this is for, Sean?"

"That's - that reloads. Doesn't it?"

"Yeah. This is a bolt action rifle. Isaac's is semi-automatic."

"What's the difference?"

Nick had that stupid smirk on his face again - _I know something you don't know!_ - as he explained. "I have to reload after every shot. Pull back on the bolt. Isaac doesn't have to. He can fire the whole magazine at once if he wants."

Isaac grinned. "Nick's gun takes .308 rounds. Mine's only a 5.56. His is gonna do a lot more damage, see?" He held up a bullet from the Steyr and one from his own hunting rifle. There was quite a difference in size.

Sean tilted his head and took one of the bullets. "Hey, 5.56. That's what you had in your leg, Nick."

"Uh-huh. Better than a .308."

When they were finished with the Steyr, they put it back together. Sean picked it up when it was a whole rifle again, turning it over in his hands. The gun was nearly as scarred as its owner.

"This thing is heavy," he commented, trying to raise it up so he could look down the scope.

"It's a big gun," Nick said, while Isaac brought his own rifle over.

They took it apart and cleaned it together, softly discussing differences between the two firearms. Sean sat aside and fiddled with the Steyr, pulling the bolt out, putting it back in. He was pretty familiar with assault rifles, or at least the type the military had used in D.C., but he'd never had an interest in hunting rifles. A gun was just a gun to him, something to keep the zombies away. To Isaac, it was an extension of his body, an instrument as precise and crucial as Sean's surgical tools.

It didn't take Nick and Isaac very long to finish with the hunting rifle. When they were done they leaned it against the wall, and Sean left the Steyr sitting next to it.

Terrence came back around with Rob. The dog was limping badly, but no longer holding his leg up. There was no knowing how far he would be able to go, or if he'd be able to keep up with them. Sean believed the fact that the dog wasn't laying on his side panting anymore was a good sign. He hadn't had high hopes, but he also hadn't added Nick as a variable. Stubborn bastard.

"Hey, Sean. Bring over your pistol," Isaac said, holding up the cleaning tools. "We'll get yours, too."

The teenager collected up his gun and brought it over.

Nick took it from him and stripped it in seconds, as if he were dismantling a child's toy.

"Jeez. Where'd you learn how to do that?" Sean asked.

"Practice," Nick said, handing the barrel to Isaac to clean.

Terrence sat cross-legged nearby. "Did you use guns a lot before all this, Nick?"

The older man looked up. "Is that your question?"

Sean lifted an eyebrow. "What?"

"Nick and I- we made a bet about the radio, and I won. I get to ask him a question." Terrence grinned. "And no, I don't want to use that. I changed my mind."

Sean elbowed him. "Ask him what he did for a living."

"That's dumb. He was probably an accountant."

Nick laughed.

"An accountant or a lawyer," Terrence continued, picking at a pimple on his cheek. "One-Eyed Nick, Attorney at Law!"

The man rolled his eyes to hide the smile on his face. "No, I wasn't a lawyer, or a cop, or anything like that," he said, sliding the magazine in and out of the base of Sean's pistol. "Wasn't too fond of the law, personally."

"Oh, really."

"Really."

Sean scratched his chin. "You've been to jail."

Nick nodded slowly.

Isaac's mouth dropped open. "No way! What did you go to jail for?"

"He probably killed someone," Sean scoffed. "How about that! A hit man. That's why you know so much about guns!"

"I won't lie to you. I'm a convicted felon."

"That's... actually, no, I'm not that surprised." Sean laughed a little. "So what'd you do? Rob a bank? Hijack a plane?"

Nick thought for a second. "It doesn't matter."

"Aw," Terrence said. "I bet it was something cool, too."

"Why don't you ask him what it was?" Sean suggested.

"Because I'm saving it."

Nick shook his head. "Don't _save_ it. Christ, do you want to film a biopic or something? I'm not really that interesting. I promise." He stretched slightly, wincing as it tugged the skin on his stomach. "Hurry up and figure out your question before I change my mind." He was beginning to look uncomfortable.

Terrence seemed to think for a second, scratching a scab on his arm.

When he asked his question, he asked it with a grin.

"What's your favorite color?"

Sean sputtered on the water he'd been drinking.

Nick smiled. "Blue."

Isaac looked defeated. "Why'd you have to ask that one?"

The eldest had a soft, thoughtful smile on his face. "I want to make him a scarf."

Sean scoffed, but he knew why Terrence had asked it. When Nick had explained how he'd lost his eye, he'd looked so... scared. Sad. Sean had never seen him like that before, and he was not surprised that Terrence didn't want to see it again. Nick didn't like to talk about his past. Sean was surprised they'd gotten anything out of him to start with.

He supposed that said a lot about Nick's level of trust in them.

"You guys ought to go to sleep," the man said after a few more minutes. "Lots to be done tomorrow."

Isaac and Terrence frowned, dismayed.

"Don't give me that look. Go to sleep."

Like children being sent to their rooms for misbehaving, they slunk to the side of the fire, next to Rob, and climbed under the blanket together. They'd been taking the first sleeping shift for the past few days now, making Sean wonder why.

Nick attached the slide back to the pistol, then handed it back to him. The teenager couldn't see much of a difference with the gun, except maybe it was a little less dusty. "Here. Now it's less likely to kill you instead of the zombies."

"Thanks," Sean said, surprised.

Maybe this was Nick's way of apologizing. It was easier to clean a pistol than it was to actually say anything.

* * *

Morning, and Sean woke up to the pale gray light bleeding into the lobby. Nick was still curled up next to him, sleeping. Terrence and Isaac were moving to and fro, packing their things, with Rob limping tenaciously behind them. The fire had died down to embers, with nobody feeding it.

He sat up with a stretch, feeling the icy cold creep under his clothes as he left the warmth of the blanket. Nick curled up tighter at his absence.

"Fuggin' _cold_," he mumbled, half-asleep.

Terrence looked tired. He'd been having a lot of bad dreams lately, Sean knew. They all had nightmares, but Terrence's ended more violently, often with him flailing or striking out at whoever tried to wake him.

Sean's stomach snarled, but there was nothing to eat but a few leftover kernels of popcorn.

They had to leave. Soon.

He turned and shook Nick's shoulder.

"Okay, time to get up."

It took the man about twenty minutes to finally push himself out of the blanket, swallow some ibuprofen and get his shit together - then they were descending the staircase to the bottom floor. Rob stayed right behind them, taking the stairs slowly, one-by-one.

Their hunger spurred them out into the white world beyond the broken windows.

The snow was deep, but it wasn't falling out of the sky anymore. Nick forged ahead, just as he'd done before, letting them step where he'd already been. Sean walked in the middle of the procession, continually glancing behind him to keep an eye on Isaac and Rob, in the back.

Nick plowed to the first probable source of food they could find - a Walgreens, a quarter-mile from the theater. They went inside and split up in the search for food.

"Go slow," Nick warned in a shout. "Watch for zombies."

There were a pile of dead bodies, stiff and frozen, just outside the aisle to the refrigerated goods. It had gotten so cold in the Walgreens that the leftover cans and bottles of soda had exploded on the shelves, coating the racks in sticky residue.

Sean couldn't believe how _bare_ the place was. Almost everything had been taken - even the birthday cards. He wondered what sort of use anyone could possibly get out of those, besides getting a fire started. Maybe people had taken them just to take them, just because they could. It didn't make much sense - everything was free now. If you found it, it was yours.

He climbed the counter into the pharmacy, digging around for useful medications. The storage shelves had been raided, but Sean had expected them to be. In the front of the pharmacy were boxes labeled alphabetically. There were still paper bags inside them.

Sean took down a couple of the boxes and stated opening the bags, searching through the individual prescriptions for anything they could possibly use. Laxatives, acid reducers, cancer drugs. He set aside a seizure medication - it could be used as a sedative, if needed.

Isaac crept up to the counter and rang the bell, startling him.

Sean turned about, grabbing his pistol, but it was the little boy who was there, grinning at him through a mouth full of food. He held up a little plastic bag of pretzels.

"Hungry?" he asked.

The teenager jumped to his feet and took the bag, ripping it open and immediately stuffing an entire handful into his mouth. They were salty and a little stale.

It was the best food he'd eaten in weeks.

Isaac swallowed and spoke again. "Terry found it in the back room."

"Is there anything else?" Sean mumbled around a mouthful of wheat and salt, fighting not to choke.

"Yeah, Nick got a hold of some peanut butter. In jars. They're unopened."

Sean looked down the aisle, then back to the mess he'd made tearing through the unclaimed prescriptions. "Izzy, help me go through the rest of this. Then we can go meet up with the others."

"Uh, okay. I don't know much about medication."

The little boy hopped over the counter top anyway, crouching down next to him to rip open the little white paper bags and look at the tiny vials within.

"Tran...dolapril?"

"Useless. Throw it away."

"Okay. Um... flu... fluoxetine?"

"Prozac. We don't need it."

"How about, um... um... augmentin? Augmentin?"

Sean leaned over and plucked the bottle from his hand. "Antibiotics. Perfect." He placed the bottle with the seizure medication, already measuring the dosage for a man Nick's size and a boy Isaac's size in his head.

"Tadalafil."

"Erectile dysfunction."

"What's erectile dysfunction...?"

"It's... y'know what, forget that. What's that other one you have?"

"Beta-something... um. It looks like a tube, it's not pills."

Sean took it and looked it over. "It's for eyes."

Isaac scratched his head. "Maybe it can help Nick's eye."

"No, it's..." he paused, and decided against explaining what the medication did, "...I'm pretty sure it's not gonna help."

"Do you think it hurts him?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

"I hope I never piss off a Cryer and lose an eye."

"You and me both," Sean muttered, pulling down the last box of prescriptions. He found a bottle of amoxicillin- another antibiotic- and some oxycodone. The latter was a pretty powerful pain reliever, and he was a little nervous to dose Terrence or Isaac with it. After all, he wanted to ease pain, not put them to sleep. Nick was the one that needed stuff like that.

When they'd picked through it all, Sean stuffed the half-dozen bottles of medication into his backpack and followed Isaac to the back room of the Walgreens. Nick and Terrence were there, digging through a pile of boxes, with Rob eating some potato chips off the floor.

Sean dug out the augmentin. "Nick, catch."

He threw it and Nick fumbled to grab it - and failed. The teenager wanted to laugh at him, but then he remembered how the man had come to be half-blind, and stopped. Nick rounded up the bottle on the floor and picked it up to read it. Sean had never noticed the way he tilted his head to study things before, to center the good eye on something.

"Augmentin. Antibiotics," Nick said.

Sean raised his eyebrows, surprised he knew what it was. "Yep. Take two of them. Right now."

The man obediently dug into the bottle, breaking off the foil seal. "Jesus, these are some horse pills," he said, shaking a pair of them into his palm.

As he forced them down his throat, Sean looked over at Terrence. The other teenager was climbing up on a supply shelf, getting into boxes that sat untouched on the higher levels. Everyone else who'd looted here previously had either been in too much of a hurry to try and get to the boxes, or they hadn't seen them when they'd come through.

Either way, Terrence knocked one down and a few bulk boxes of assorted snacks came tumbling out.

To them, it was like uncovering gold in a hollow dust bowl.

Like stumbling upon an oasis in the middle of the Sahara.

Isaac let out an excited squeal and ran over to open the boxes. The stuff inside was individually-sealed, sort of like the snacks one might find in a vending machine. These sort of foods had been the main staple of their diet for a long time, and it would continue to be so until the new supplies ran out. Sean was worried that they weren't getting enough vitamins - he hadn't eaten a piece of fruit for months, not counting the rock-hard, shriveled raisins that had been in the trail mix.

Nick fished out a chocolate chip cookie and a Pop-tart, the latter of which he unwrapped and fed to Rob. He chewed on the cookie slowly, watching the others tear into the snacks.

"You're gonna eat more than that, I hope," Sean said, stuffing bags of peanuts into Isaac's sack.

"I will. I don't want to be pinned down and have more shoved down my throat."

"Don't think I won't do it."

"You'd have to catch me first." That smirk came over his face again - the one Sean had come to realize meant he was playing, trying to get a rise out of him.

_You and Nick are a lot alike_, Terrence had said.

The man wasn't much of a role model.

But he was a hell of a survivor.

They took all the food - every last scrap they could find - and marched back out into the snow. The movie theater was far out of sight, and, as they started down a silent street, Sean could see the road leading out of the town. There wasn't much out there, just fields and hills and trees.

Nick paused at an intersection in the road, pulling out the map from his back pocket. A sign pointed one way to Frostburg, and in another to Cumberland. Both cities lay an almost equal distance away. Nick stared at the sign, then down to his map.

"This way," he said, pointing left, toward Frostburg.

The others tromped behind him. Rob limped along in the back, keeping a set, if not fast, pace with Isaac. Every once in a while, Nick would slow down and allow them to catch back up again.

"So, _Frost_burg," Sean heard Terrence say. "I wonder if it's going to be cold there."

He couldn't see Nick's face, but he was sure the man was rolling his eyes.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-reader and brain ghost, Kit._

_Is it possible I actually posted another chapter less than a week before my last? Holy smokes. I'm just as surprised as you are._

_Thanks to everyone who added me on Deviantart/Steam/360. I've met so many cool people through this fandom! It's awesome!_

_Coming up next week: The Leader. A storm, a train, and an encounter on a frozen lake.)  
_


	23. The Leader

The road to Frostburg ended up being highway forty - part of the intersection that had been spoken of in the radio transmission. Nick intended to follow it until they hit that intersection, then to shoot northward to Eight Springs. On good days, they made a couple dozen miles - Rob slowed them down a lot, but he wasn't leaving the dog behind. It'd be like dumping one of the boys.

But at the rate Sean was giving him headaches, it'd be nice to not hear his voice for a few days.

They tromped through the snow. It wasn't terribly cold today, not as bad as it had been, and the snowfall wasn't as deep. The sun had even come out, making them squint from its reflection against the white. When it had finally dipped back behind gray clouds, his entire field of vision was tinted green, like he'd been staring at the sun itself.

A few hours before dusk, Nick's eye caught sight of a tiny animal scuttling across the top of the snow. He wasn't sure what it was - a squirrel? A chipmunk?

Rob let out a bellowing bark and took off from Isaac's side, lumbering after the rodent.

"Rob! Rob, no! Get back here!"

The dog ignored him, trying to pick up speed.

Nick motioned for the boys to stay where they were and went after his dog.

"You stupid mutt. You're going to hurt yourself!"

Rob came to a stop at the foot of a tree, where the animal had climbed up. He put his paws on the tree and barked up at it.

"Rob! Cut it out!"

Nick reached him, and the dog lowered himself back down to the ground.

"Bad dog!"

Rob's remaining ear fell flat against his skull. He cowered.

"Get back over there," Nick growled, watching Rob struggle through the path he'd made to get back to the boys. "God, you could have fucked yourself up doing that. You're lucky you didn't. Stupid dog."

"Maybe we need a leash," Terrence said.

"I've got a rope."

Nick made a slipknot out of it and tightened it carefully over Rob's neck, then handed the other end to Isaac.

"You sure you can keep a hold on him?"

"Yeah. I won't let him run off, promise."

Rob took rather well to a leash, Nick thought. When it was on him he heeled obediently next to the boy, both of them going at about the same pace. Nick wondered how much training the dog actually had. Someone had cared for him before all this, that much was apparent.

He scoffed to himself when he realized he had begun to wonder what happened to the dog's previous owners. Like he cared. Like it mattered.

But he couldn't help but wonder what the dog's name had been before Rob.

* * *

"Hey, Nick."

It was mid afternoon of the next day, and it was _cold._ The wind was blowing straight at their faces, and he'd slowed down, bending his head against it. The kid was able to keep up with him, and was using his body as a shield against the weather. "What is it, Isaac?"

"What did the zombie win an award for?"

Nick turned his head to look at the kid. "This better be good."

The boy's punchline came through chattering teeth. "D-d-d_-dead-_ication."

"Where the fuck do you come up with those, Isaac?"

"I dunno. I like jokes."

Nick stared ahead of them. The wind picked up, shrieking across the ground, pushing the snow into thin streams down the untouched road ahead of him. It brushed over the tops of the trees, making them sway and rattle loudly. The wind threatened to rip his hat away, but he was scared that if he pulled his hands from his pockets to still it, they would freeze and fall off.

"Fuck, it's cold," he grunted, trying to burrow deeper into his jacket.

Sean spoke up from the back. "I think we need to stop!" He had to shout to be heard over the wind.

Nick looked ahead again. There were trees, and a single car. He forged toward the vehicle, only to find it was locked. They'd have to break open a window to get in, and that would make the car useless against the cold.

"Over there!" Terrence cried loudly. "Check it out!"

Nick looked to where he was pointing. Through the silver veil of ice, he could see it- a freight train, sitting implacable on a set of tracks. The engine cab, rust-red in the dim light, sat invitingly a few hundred feet away.

"It better not be locked," Nick shouted, then started off again.

Freight trains were a lot bigger than he remembered. It was taller than the subway cars in D.C., towering over them, still and silent. Nick climbed up to the entry door. It opened with a single hard shove, half-frozen to the body of the train.

"Cool!" Terrence said.

"All right, climb in," Nick breathed, helping Isaac up into it. He had to all but carry Rob in himself - the dog could have made the jump, athletic as he was, if he wasn't walking on three legs and fighting to keep up with them in the first place.

When they were all inside, he shut the cab door, and they breathed and shivered in the new, dusty silence. The inside of the train smelled like must instead of rot, like wet newspaper. Nick walked the short distance to the instrument panels, looking out the squat view port at the storm outside. To his right, he could see a wide expanse of land. It was completely flat. He tilted his head and squinted.

It was not until he saw an upturned boat that he realized he was looking at a lake - frozen over, with snow covering the ice.

"Wow, that's weird," Sean breathed next to him. "I've never seen a whole lake freeze like that before."

"Told you it was cold," Nick said, setting down the two rifles and his duffel bag and sitting in the engineer's seat. He rubbed his hands together, wishing they could build a fire.

"Don't forget to take your antibiotics," the teenager said, before wandering off from the instrument panels and toward the back of the cab. Isaac trailed behind him.

Terrence came and sat in the seat next to Nick. Rob curled up at his feet.

"I've never been in the front part of a train before," the kid said, crossing his arms over his stomach.

"Me either. I thought it'd be more spacious."

"Wonder what it was carrying?"

Nick leaned his head on the back of the seat and shut his eyes. "Probably coal."

Terrence was looking out the window at the lake. "Really?"

"Fuck if I know, Terry."

God, he was tired.

Sean came back with Isaac and shrugged. "There's a cot in the other room," he said, "but not much else. Besides an engine. Wish we could get it running."

"I don't know the first thing about trains," Nick grunted, and got to his feet. "I'm gonna go lay down."

* * *

_Honnnk._

Nick jumped awake at the sudden, loud noise, barely aware he'd fallen asleep in the first place.

"Fuck! What the hell is that?"

Isaac and the others were in front of the console, laughing. "Sorry! It was the horn. I didn't know that was the button," the boy's tiny voice called back.

Nick climbed off the cot and came over. Sean and Terrence were both in one of the seats, with Isaac on Terry's lap so he could see out the window.

"Coming into Philadelphia, woo-woo!" Isaac cried.

"Oh, no! There's zombies on the tracks! Aaaah!" Terrence played along, flailing his arms in the air.

"That's okay, we'll just plow into them! Blam, blam, blam!"

A rumbling sound came from outside.

_Bam-bam-bam._

That hadn't been the boys.

Nick lifted his head and looked out the wide window, at the empty land outside. It was silent, dead. The wind had died down, and the sun was beginning to dip below the hazy horizon, creating a vibrant splash of orange and red against the sky. It was the most color he'd seen in days.

"Vrooom! Bullet train!"

"Isaac, I'm pretty sure this is a -"

"_Shh_!" Nick hissed suddenly. "Shut up for a second." He leaned his hands on the console and kept his eye out the window. "You guys hear that?"

_Ba-bam, ba-bam, ba-bam_.

It was a sound that Nick had never wanted to come across again. He felt his stomach drop damn near to the center of the earth. The noises came closer and became louder. To their left. He turned his head, and there it was.

His heart nearly stopped.

A Tank.

It crested the top of a low hill - God, it was _huge_, had they always been that _big?_ - and sped toward the train.

The boys shrieked and scrambled to leave the cab. Nick grabbed the closest - Isaac - by the wrist.

"Stop! Stop, stop, stop. Shh. Be quiet. Come here."

He ushered them close to him.

"Don't try to run. Stay here. Be quiet."

All three of them had terrified tears in their eyes. Isaac was already sucking back huge sobs.

Rob growled low and deep in his chest.

"Shh, shh. Shh."

_Ba-blam, ba-blam, ba-blam._

_Crack._

It was the sound of a large fist hitting the top of one of the train cars. It rang like a gunshot. The boys shrank toward him. Terrence clutched his arm, and Sean hid his face in Nick's shoulder.

"It's going to pass us by," Nick whispered, barely audible. "It doesn't know we're here. It's going to pass us. God, please _pass us by_." Isaac slipped a tiny hand into his; he squeezed it tightly. "Quiet, quiet."

The Tank rumbled past the front of the train, and went around the other way. They could hear it huffing, growling, making loud, curious sounds from its barrel chest. It was seeking them out. It sensed them, the uninfected survivors, and it knew they were close.

Nick caught the sudden, sharp smell of urine, and said nothing.

With a low, undulating roar, it brought a fist down on the front of the engine car. The entire train shook underneath them, rocking on the tracks. Nick tried to swallow, but it felt like he had something cold and solid lodged in there. His heart was drumming madly in his chest, and his lungs didn't seem to want to work at all.

Isaac let out a wail and Nick pressed his shaking hand over his mouth. He didn't speak, but he caught the boy's red eyes and shook his head. Isaac quaked violently underneath his hand.

Outside, the Tank made a bark of frustration. The _ba-blam, ba-blam_ of its feet and hands on the ground began to draw away. Nick lifted his head and tried to see, but the window was at the wrong angle. Isaac's hand was still tight in his. Sean sobbed once in his ear.

"Did it... leave?" he whispered, gripping Nick's jacket.

"Stay on the floor," Nick ordered them, gently setting Isaac down and brushing the other two off him. "Shh." He raised a finger to his lips and straightened up, padding silently down the train car toward the window. The Tank had stopped making noise. Had it really given up searching for them?

Then, _blam, blam, blam_ - there it was.

Gaining speed.

And coming right at them.

Nick saw it for a second, outside the train, and in that single moment it had cleared easily fifty feet. It was _fast_, coming at them like a Charger, plowing through snow and fences and everything else. Nick turned from the window; he could still hear it, getting louder, the sound filling his ears. Too slow. He couldn't move fast enough.

He saw the boys' faces, each white with terror, eyes wet, voices silent.

Nick was only able to reach Isaac. He grabbed the boy by his shoulder, threw him to the floor, and bent over him on instinct, shielding the tiny body with his own.

It hit the train.

There was a noise louder than a gunshot, louder than a jet engine, all around them, as the walls and floor of the train switched positions, all of them tumbling about on the inside like objects in a clothes dryer.

It had flipped the train -

Flipped an _entire fucking freight train _-

It was rolling down the incline, toward the lake.

He couldn't hear the boys shouting through the noise, couldn't even hear his own thoughts, useless as they were. Isaac was still with him; he clutched the boy tightly, reflexively, to his chest, hoping that if something sharp struck them, it would strike himself first.

The ceiling became the floor. Then the wall. Then it was the ceiling again.

There was a strange shattering noise, and the rolling stopped. They fell in scattered positions all around, dazed, alive. It was silent for a few blessed seconds. Nick heard Terrence sobbing; Isaac wailed in his arms. Rob whined.

A _creak_.

A muffled roar, forced from twisted, inhuman lungs in a barrel chest.

The train screamed again. A dent appeared in the wall above them. Then, another.

"Run. Run, it's breaking in," Nick whispered. He pushed Isaac off him, got to his feet, grabbed the boy's hand, and took the Steyr off the floor.

Red sunlight bled in through a rip in the metal.

Nick screamed. "_Run_!"

They went in opposite directions - Terrence and Sean dragging Rob down the back end of the train, Isaac and Nick to the front. There was shattered glass all over the instrument panels. The window was wide open, and icy air was blowing in. They could hear the Tank, still beating its way to the innards of the train to get at them.

"Out the window, hurry," Nick breathed, climbing out and tugging the boy with him.

When they landed outside the train, their boots splashed in icy water. Nick skittered back, dragging Isaac with him, huddling against the front of the engine in an attempt to avoid detection.

They were on a flat expanse of snowy land - the surface of the lake. To their right was a steep hill; at the top, a few of the train cars still sat on the tracks, detached from the front cab by the force of the Tank's blow.

Behind them, the engine was beginning to sink into the lake. The cracking sound had been the thick ice around the shore shattering.

Nick yanked Isaac close and began running, the little boy stumbling as he desperately tried to match his stride. Some of the ice beneath the snow was slick. He wasn't sure where he was going; there was no cover anywhere, no houses, no trees. It was only going to be a matter of seconds before it saw them.

"Nick -" Isaac panted, "Nick - I can't -"

"Faster, come on!"

The Tank roared again, the booming noise echoing across the wide, frozen lake.

They came to a dock and climbed up upon it. Both of them were panting, breaths fogging in the air. Nick glanced back. The Tank was still working at the train car. He couldn't see Terrence or Sean anywhere. Nick led the boy up a set of old wooden stairs to a boat loading platform. There were still a couple of cars in a nearby lot.

Together, they huddled behind one of those cars, and shivered.

"Nick," Isaac sobbed in his arms.

"I know. Shh."

He heard distant gunfire; a pistol, and a shotgun. His heart twisted. The Tank yelled again, not in agony, but in frustration, in rage. The sound of its hands slapping on metal sounded like explosions from far away.

A high, distant scream.

Nick couldn't tell whose voice it was.

He knew it would be the last time he heard it.

Isaac moaned and took in a great, sucking breath, clinging to his arm, tiny fingers digging in deep. Nick held him tightly.

"I'm sorry, Nick. I'm sorry I made the horn go off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Shh. It's okay."

It became quiet out there, around the train. Nick knew what it meant. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his chin against the top of Isaac's head. _Please_, he pleaded, to nothing in particular, to anything that would help him, _please, not Isaac, too. God, please, God, no._

_Blam-blam, blam-blam._ Tank's footsteps.

Coming at them again.

Nick let out a painful sob from his chest, getting back to his feet and taking Isaac with him. When he stood, he saw the Tank, and when it saw them, it zeroed in and doubled its speed. It was moving faster than any living thing Nick had ever seen, massive arms and undersized legs propelling it through the snow. It bore down upon them, a demon straight from Hell, and roared.

They turned and ran - tried to run.

The Tank grunted and something came at them - it was the car they had just taken shelter behind. The hood section came down upon Nick and knocked him bodily to the snow. Isaac's hand came out of his, and the kid shrieked as the chassis of the car crushed him to the ground, his voice falling away so sharply, it was as if it had never been.

Behind Nick, above him, all around him, was the sound of the Tank. He clambered to his feet, trying to shake off the pain.

Like a coward, he fled - lunging for the frozen lake, stumbling down the incline to the flat surface. Right behind him was the monster, roaring. The ice was hard beneath his boots, like concrete.

And the Tank was right on top of him.

One of its hands caught him from behind. The ground leapt away as he tumbled through the air; sky and earth got all mixed together until gravity came and corrected him. He heard a hollow _snap_ as he hit the hard ice and rolled, pain in his back, his side, his legs, everywhere. When he finally slid to a stop he was on his blind side, and he could see blood on the snow around him, and he couldn't breathe. The Steyr's strap had snapped, and it lay a few feet away, sunlight glinting off the gray barrel.

The Tank began to close the last of the distance.

And Nick knew he had never been closer to death.

These were the last seconds of his short, stupid, pitiful little life.

It approached him a bit slower this time, as if savoring this kill. Nick panted into the snow, feeling the tears in his eyes, hearing the sobs coming from his own throat.

"No, no, no, please, no."

The Tank was so close, he could see every blood vessel under its ruined skin. He could hear its labored breathing, much like his own. Its eyes were white and empty, like whatever awaited Nick when that fist finally crushed him into the ice.

No. He wasn't going out like this. He wasn't going to _lay here_ while that _monster_ effortlessly lifted a hand and killed him with it -

The ground made a crackling sound underneath the snow- it was the ice, straining under the weight of the Tank.

The ice.

It was breaking.

His mind raced.

Nick fought back to his feet. His legs wobbled.

He already had the greatest possible weapon against the Tank - he had used it once before.

The Steyr was feet away. He brought it up into his hands, and lifted it, not bothering with the scope.

He fired.

_Ch-chk-chh._ He yanked back the bolt and fired again, but not at the oncoming Tank - at the ground ahead of it. The high-caliber bullets made huge pockmarks on the surface of the lake, sending shards of ice glittering into the air.

Nick backpedaled, stumbling on his own feet.

Fired again.

The Tank thundered over the spot where he'd been shooting, and -

_Crack._

The ice splintered beneath the Tank's feet with an explosion of noise that echoed across the lake. It tilted and scrambled, making a confused, frustrated grunt. Water jumped up from under the broken surface, grabbing at the zombie and tugging it downward. The Tank howled and lifted one arm to pull itself from the dip, but that arm hit the ice and broke off another chunk, casting it deeper into the water.

Nick scrambled back.

The zombie made a last roar of defiance, trying to climb out, and then, it sank. The lake water frothed for a while in the open pit of the ice, and then, it was still.

Nick sucked in the first short breath he'd taken in what felt like hours. He dropped the Steyr, and collapsed to the snow.

The whole silent world crashed down upon him, consuming him. The pain ate at his mind.

"Sean, did you see?" he called, weakly. He could barely even whisper. "Did you see? I killed it. Please, Terry. Answer me. Isaac..."

They didn't answer.

They would never answer.

Nick stared up at the empty sky for a long minute, then rolled over, got his hands under him, and shoved himself to his knees. His back felt like it had been twisted all the way round, three hundred and sixty degrees. He hugged his left side and took in short, ragged gasps. Probably a broken rib. There was warmth on the skin of his stomach - he'd ripped some of his stitches.

With sharp, whistling gasps, he struggled to his feet, using the Steyr as a crutch to help him stand back up.

The train had stopped sinking; it was still half out of the water. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound.

Nick let out the deepest, most painful breath he'd ever taken and started toward it with slow, faltering steps, dragging the rifle behind him. The trek felt like miles, and the sun was dipping down behind him, shifting from red to pink and purple.

When he reached the train, he stopped and leaned against it, catching his breath.

"Terrence," he cried. "Sean. Please, answer me."

Nothing.

Nick coughed; blood flecked the snow beneath him and pain lanced across his chest. He pushed himself off the train like a ship at sea and stumbled toward the other end of the car - where Sean and Terrence and Rob had run to. When he got to the other side, he found Sean's pistol laying in the snow, footprints and blood all around.

"Terry? Sean?"

There was a thready, barely audible noise of pain.

Turning his head with a jerky, agonizing slowness, he looked over, to the other side of the cab. It was starting to get shadowy and dark, but he could still see that there was someone out there, face-down, unmoving. Rob was laying next to him. Nick recognized the color of the jacket and called out hoarsely:

"Terrence! Terry, are you okay?"

He didn't answer, and he didn't move.

Nick staggered out toward him, dropping to his knees at his side.

Rob lifted his head slowly, then lay it back down on his paws.

"Terrence. Terrence," he muttered. His throat was raw. "Hey, kid, hey."

He reached out with one arm, and turned him over -

Then looked away, heart dropping all the way down past his stomach, and his stomach rolled over it.

Blood. Everywhere. He could see bones - but - but the boy's ruined, pockmarked chest was still moving up and down in random jumps, even though his breath was bubbling out of a hole between his ribs.

Terrence's eyes were fluttering. He let out a gurgling, awful noise, shattered hands fluttering about as he tried to buffer himself from something that wasn't there.

"Terry," Nick spoke to him tentatively, as if his voice might break him further. "It's me. Can you hear me?"

The teenager opened his eyes, slid them sluggishly to his face. "Nick," he breathed. There was no air for him to give strength to his words. His voice was fragile.

"Hey, kid."

"Did you get it? ...The zombie?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I killed it."

"I knew - knew you would." A tiny smile came over his face. "Hey, Nick?"

"I'm here."

"Am I all right?"

"Yeah," Nick whispered. "You're just fine."

Terrence's eyes were unfocused, glazed. God, the _blood_. "I can't feel my legs," he gasped.

"That's okay. It's just cold," Nick told him. _He broke his back,_ that analytical, unforgivable part of his mind said.

The teenager licked his lips reflexively. Even his tongue was bleeding; he'd probably bit it in the train's downhill crash. "Where's Izzy... where's Sean?" he asked, eyes darting around with lazy movements before settling somewhere between Nick's shoulder and the end of the world.

"They're fine. They're both fine, Terry."

The boy began to clutch reflexively at Nick's arms, fingers tight enough to bruise. He jerked as if he were trying to sit up, or look around, but somewhere there were some crossed wires, and the only thing that happened was his legs trembling weakly. He swallowed and made a rattling noise in his throat. "Hey... Nick?"

"I'm not going anywhere, Terry... I'm right here."

Bubbling blood. "I'm not going to make it... am I?"

He'd said, '_I want to help you. Let me help you.'_

Nick's eyes were hot and painful. "No. No, you aren't."

Terrence smiled softly again, gazing at the sky. "That's all right. I..." his entire body was trembling. "Well. I'm... happy you... I..." He focused suddenly, staring hard at him. Fear fell over his face. "I'm... I'm _scared_. Nick, I'm scared. I don't want to - don't want -"

"I know. I know." He reached up hesitantly, and the boy grabbed his hand and held it tight, as if Nick could pull him out of that dark, downward pit.

He'd said, '_Stay with me. I'm not gonna leave you laying here.'_

Terrence coughed, and spots of red appeared on his cheeks. They mirrored the pimples. "It hurts. Sean, it hurts. It hurts." His voice was rising, but only to a hiss. "Help me, Sean. Help me, please, _help -_" The words became a froth of blood, spilling out down his chin. His shattered back arched, he seized once, and then -

It was over.

He'd said, '_I'm glad I found you.'_

_And he'd smiled._

Nick stared wildly at the body while a haze crept in on all sides, tugging insistently on his tenuous grip of consciousness. He fought it, but it could not be shaken off, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't see, and he was sinking, sinking, sinking; down to the ground, into the snow -

_Say hey, Daisy Mae._

_How many children have died today?_

_-_ and under the oil-black slick that came up and swallowed him whole.

* * *

_(A/N: So, uh... not much to say here is there...?  
_

_Thanks to my beta-reader, Kit._

_Coming up next: The Patriarch. I can't think of anything to say that doesn't spoil it, so... see you next week!_

_EDIT: 01-18-2011: Fixed a plot issue that REV6Pilot pointed out. Thanks bro.)  
_


	24. The Patriarch

Nick came to, and he was alone.

Terrence lay, twisted and silent and stiff, next to him. Rob was gone. It was dark now, but the moon was bright and full above him, turning everything to a silvery gray-scale. He couldn't hear anything but the faraway _plink-plink-plink_ of dripping water, and the low creak of the ice settling beneath the freight train.

He wasn't sure he could get up again, so he lay and listened, hearing the drumming of his heart in his head, the rattling noise his chest made when he tried to take a deep breath. Nick wondered idly, callously, if his rib had broken and stabbed him in the lung.

No, he'd be dead already if that was the case. He'd have drowned in his own blood by now.

A noise rang out into the icy air.

A shrill scream of pain.

Nick shifted, his heartbeat quickening. Who was it? Isaac? Was he still alive?

He struggled to roll over, trying to get himself standing again. His limbs were stiff with cold and pain, but he bit down on his tongue and forced himself through it.

Grasping at the torn edge of the train next to him, he used it to drag himself back to a standing position. Everything hurt. He felt like he'd been... well, punched by a Tank. The hard roll he had taken on the ice when he'd landed hadn't helped, either. Nick prayed he hadn't broken anything irreparably. His legs seemed to work still... that was a good sign.

Taking a few breaths, he paused. He did not look down at the body in the snow, so still and small. He couldn't.

"I'm so sorry, Terry," he gasped, and started off.

The shriek echoed across the lake again, and Nick would have thought it a zombie's cry if it hadn't been made by such a familiar voice. It was definitely Isaac. Was he still under that car? Was he trying to get free?

He made his way, slowly, down the side of the train. His feet slipped on newly-formed slush, made from the water of the lake seeping up through the cracks in the ice. When he reached the end of the train cab, he stopped, squinting out into the moonlit space before him. His night vision was terrible - he couldn't see anything. He wasn't sure how far he was from that dock they'd climbed earlier.

But he forged ahead, staggering out into the wide open of the lake. _Faster_, he pleaded to himself. _Move faster. He needs help. You need to help him._

Nick made a good distance - a couple dozen yards - before a slick spot in the ice, hidden beneath the snow, sent him back down. He landed on the side with the hurt rib and it felt like he'd fallen upon a dozen knives. If the wind hadn't been knocked from him, he would have screamed.

Instead he made a subdued, whistling moan. He coughed, and regretted doing so. It made the pain worse, and for a few seconds - or a few minutes - all he knew was the blazing, white-hot agony digging across his entire left side. Worse than the gunshot. At least then, he'd still been able to breathe. Now even the tiniest of gasps felt like he was inhaling fire.

_Oh God get back up get back up -_

A distant voice drifted to his ears.

Then a pair of thudding footsteps, coming at him.

Nick scrambled to roll himself over, his body made awkward with pain, but he had to protect himself from what it was -

"Oh, God, you're alive. Thank God you're alive."

Sean.

It was Sean. He was sobbing, loudly, in either relief or because he hurt.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and the kid's face came into view. He looked awful - cuts and bruises and swelling across his face. A well-worn trail of blood from his nose. One arm lay awkwardly twisted and useless at his side; the other reached up and placed its cold fingers against Nick's throat.

_Thank you God, Jesus Christ thank you thank you thank you -_

"Hi, Sean," he mumbled.

"Hi, yourself," Sean whimpered. He was blinking back tears out of his eyes. "How bad off are you?"

"I think I broke something," Nick wheezed, dragging one of his hands to his side.

"That's okay. It's okay. I'm gonna get you up." Sean looped one of his arms around his shoulders, trying to help him to his feet. "Why do you have to be so tall...?"

Nick's head swam with vertigo, and he suddenly remembered D.C., when a sixteen-year-old kid had picked him up off a sidewalk and saved his life. He stared at the snow, at the way the moonlight glittered along it, how most of it was clean and untouched and smooth. A cough forced its way from his throat - that terrible pain flared again, as if he were being stabbed with a hot knife. There came the warm coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

Sean grunted, slipping and nearly dropping him. Nick felt gravity trying to bring him back down to the ground and let out a soft, scared noise, fearing hitting the ice again, terrified of the pain that had happened before. He was scrambling and gripping at the teenager's shoulders.

"Please don't drop me," he begged, plaintively. "Please don't drop me."

"Shh, I've got you. You're not gonna fall." Sean reassured him, and hissed. "I think my arm's broken, Nick," he said. "Can you set a break?"

"I don't know." Nick sucked in more air, but was unable to catch his breath. Terror flooded him. He felt like he was drowning. "Never d-done it before," he said, trying to sound strong, but to his own ears he sounded exactly how he felt.

"Then this'll be a learning experience."

They got to the dock and then to the wooden incline. The parking lot was still there, with the overturned car. Isaac lay next to that on a blanket, pale and still. Relief filled Nick's gut, then turned ice-cold. The little boy's leg was turned in a direction it shouldn't have been, and hastily-wrapped gauze around his head was dripping with blood. He wasn't conscious.

"I could only find him," Sean said, gently setting Nick down against the car. "And you. Couldn't find Terry or Rob."

"Terry's dead." He had to cough the words out, force them past his numb lips. His voice was weak, but compared to the silence afterward, it may have been a shout.

Sean began sobbing again. "Are you... are you sure?"

"Yes. I'm sure."

"Oh, God." He dropped down weakly next to Isaac and made a strangled wail in the back of his throat. "Oh my God."

Nick slumped against the car, trying to wrestle his frayed and shattered thoughts into something that might help. All his mind could come up with was the fact that Terrence was dead - _Terrence was dead_ - and, very soon, he would be, too. His breath was going to go out and he'd suffocate, right there in the snow. He coughed again. More blood, more dizzying pain. More terror.

Sean came over. "I need your help with Izzy," he said. "Please, Nick. I can't lose them both."

He struggled back to his feet, barely able to make the two yards to Isaac's side. Sean knelt down next to the kid's injured leg. "I need to set this," he said. "I need you to hold him for me."

"Okay," Nick said, sinking down to the blanket. He tugged Isaac carefully into his lap, gently holding the kid's head at one shoulder. The boy didn't move, or twitch, or do anything, just lay there, pale and silent. "I'm ready," Nick whispered.

Sean let out a breath, then, face distorted with agony from using his arm, he twisted Isaac's leg back together with a _crack_.

The little boy screamed and screamed, sharp and shrill, echoing over the snow, piercing everything around him. He bucked and fought against the pain, scratching at the arms holding him. Nick didn't give an inch, but he found himself whispering into the boy's ear:

"It's all right. You're gonna be fine. Isaac, you're gonna be okay."

"Just got to set the splint," Sean breathed, grabbing it up.

It was made of cardboard and scraps of clothes.

When he was done, the teenager slumped down and dragged a hand through his wet, shaggy hair, stared at the ground with watery eyes, and fell silent.

Nick caught movement to his right.

Rob. The dog was limping slowly along, returning to them. Sean dragged his fingers of the unhurt arm through the dog's ruff, then hugged him close, and sobbed. Rob licked his arm and reclined in the snow next to him.

Nick continued to hold onto Isaac, only because he wasn't able to do much else.

"We're gonna die, huh?" he asked after a while, into the frozen silence all around them.

"Yes," Sean replied, staring out at the frozen lake.

Nick pulled Isaac closer and shut his eyes against the world.

* * *

Sean approached him a half-hour later, squeezing his eyes shut once to clear them of tears. He had the medical kit hanging from the good hand. The swelling on his face was getting worse. "Can you help me with my arm?"

The teenager talked him through it, gasping in pain. More cardboard for his splint. The sling that Terrence had used for his elbow was still in Sean's medical supplies; he used it on himself, now. When they were done he turned toward Nick to inspect his ribs.

Where the Tank had hit him, there was a huge bruise, already black. Sean was somehow more worried about the torn stitches than the three ribs that were sticking out awkwardly - more than the others did, anyway. He instructed Nick to re-wrap the ACE as tightly as he could. It seemed to keep the pain at a constant level rather than alleviate it. There wasn't much else they could do, he knew that. If he was bleeding into his lungs, it'd be over soon, anyway.

Sean checked his pulse again, then shined the penlight into his eye. With a grunt, he went and did the same with with Isaac. Then he came around to sit next to the older man, sighing as he reclined against the car. The teenager's face was swelling, badly, especially up around his forehead.

For a while, the only noise was Nick's breathing, that strange whistling noise.

"How'd you kill it?"

Nick lifted his head. "Huh?"

"That zombie," Sean said. "How did you kill it?"

"I shot the ice on the lake... when it went over it, the ice broke. Drowned."

The teenager blinked slowly. "Fast thinking."

Nick nodded, looking over the kid's face again. It was still getting worse. "Now what?" he asked, to himself, to Sean, and to nobody at all.

"Don't know."

They sat for a while longer. Dawn was peeking over the horizon, silver and gold.

Then, Nick steeled himself and climbed up off the ground, stumbling over to Isaac.

"What are you doing?" Sean asked.

"Carrying him. Come on."

"Nick, no. You can't. Your ribs -"

"I don't care. Give me a hand, okay?"

Sean came over, clumsily helping Isaac onto Nick's back. The little boy was limp, unmoving.

"You're going to kill yourself," Sean said.

"I know. Get your shit together. The longer we stay here, the quicker we're gonna die."

Nick carried his duffel bag in one hand and the Steyr in the other. His lucky gun. Sean carried his medical supplies and as much food as he could lift with his broken arm. It wasn't much. Rob raised himself carefully off the ground and paced around their feet.

"Let's go."

Nick straightened up, adjusted the slight form on his shoulders once, and started off. Sean trailed behind, the backpack over his shoulder and grocery sack on his uninjured arm. Rob meandered far in the back, his limp becoming more and more pronounced. The wind kicked up and blew snow at them. It drifted over the roads and against the guard rails.

They went down I-40, toward Eight Springs, and they didn't look back.

* * *

It was a sunny day.

Sean panted as he fought to keep up. His arm felt like it was on fire, even though the rest of his body was freezing. Nick was crazy. That was the only reasoning Sean could come up with for the man's actions. Who would purposefully put themselves in more danger like that?

Nick kept going forward, plowing through the snow, glaring ahead of him. If he was cold or hurt, he said nothing of it. Every few minutes he would have to pause to catch his breath, sucking in short, wheezing lungfuls of air. Then he would shift Isaac on his back, look ahead, and continue on, like a machine.

About four miles passed underneath their feet before Isaac stirred. He coughed in Nick's ear and moaned weakly, hands twitching at his neck.

"Mom," he murmured.

Sean stumbled on his feet in the snow as he went to catch up to Nick. Trying to see if the youngest had a fever, he placed a hand on his throat, but his fingers were numb and he couldn't tell how warm or cold the skin was underneath his own.

Isaac came back around slowly. He started to understand what kind of danger he was in. That they were only biding time. Not just for him, but for all of them. It was over.

For a few hours, he cried bitterly into the back of Nick's neck, in pain and fear, and ardency.

Nick said nothing. He walked on and on. The wind whipped at his face but he did not bend his head to protect himself from it - doing so would freeze out the body on his back. He coughed, and spat frothy blood, and walked on.

Eventually, Isaac set his chin on Nick's left shoulder and gazed out at the featureless road ahead.

"Hey, Nick," he whispered. His voice sounded like cracking ice.

"Hm?" It was the first vocal noise that the man had made since they started walking.

"Why did the zombie cross the road?"

For a minute, Nick didn't reply. It was as if the question sailed right over his head. Then, he seemed to realize that it was the opening to a joke, he blinked. "I don't know," he said hoarsely, the cold making even his voice sluggish. He took a breath. "Why did the zombie cross the road, Isaac?"

"To eat the chicken."

* * *

Over the course of the entire day, they had crossed about seven miles. I-40 continued to stretch on ahead of them without turning or stopping.

They slept in the bathroom of an abandoned warehouse, all tucked into one mess of limbs, shivering under the shared blanket. There was no fuel for a fire. They shared a bag of pretzels and peanut butter and listened to Nick gasping weakly in the dark. Their bottles of water had all frozen solid and melted slowly under the blanket with them.

When Isaac realized they were missing their fourth person, Nick told him.

For the first time, the boy didn't cry.

Sean was quite certain that Nick wouldn't last the night, that he would wake in the middle of the night to find the man still and dead. Your chances weren't too great when you were coughing up blood. The added factor of freezing temperatures and _carrying Isaac on his back_ were not going to cast odds in his favor.

But Sean awoke in the morning from a fragmented slumber at the sound of Nick muttering something hoarsely to Isaac, and nearly cried with relief.

* * *

"What do you call a Mr. Tongue that makes honey?"

"I don't know, Isaac."

"A zom-bee."

The snow was falling all around them. Sean's swollen face was giving him trouble; he could barely see. For a few minutes, he held onto the edge of Nick's jacket to stay with him, unable to see where he was walking. The older man took the rope lead off of Rob and tied one end to his belt loop, then placed the other end in the kid's hands.

"Now... don't wander off."

They staggered down I-40.

An hour later, Isaac spoke up.

"Why are zombies always tired?"

Nick swallowed another cough, another mouthful of blood. "Why are they tired, Isaac?"

The little boy shivered. "They are dead on their feet."

"Good one," Nick said. _Keep him talking. _"Tell me another."

"Why was there a decapitated head inside the piano?"

"Why?"

"A zombie was trying to play by ear."

Sean, stumbling behind them, barked a weak laugh.

Nick readjusted Isaac's weight on his back and grit his teeth at the pain, so hard he was sure they would all shatter. He wasn't sure if having no teeth in his mouth would make him any uglier than he already was.

Isaac reached up and brushed the snow off the top of Nick's head, tugging the hat down snugly over his ears. It was all he could really do to help, besides keep his arms wrapped around the man's neck to shield it from the cold.

Another long few hours of walking, and Nick slowed.

Sean caught up, trying to make sure he wasn't about to collapse.

"Look," the older man said, nodding to the ground.

It was hard for the teenager to see from the swelling around his eyes, but beneath their feet was a set of tire tracks in the snow, obviously not that old, since it was snowing now and they could still see the pattern of tread from the tires.

"We must be going the right way to Eight Springs," Sean said.

Nick nodded, and walked on.

* * *

They lived through another day, another night. Nick was still fighting for breath and Isaac still couldn't walk, but it was something. The little boy may as well have become surgically attached to Nick's back. He was becoming paler and paler - shaking harder and harder. They didn't have much time left.

But in the afternoon, they saw it.

A sign, pointing down the highway, that said '_Seven Springs Ski Resort_.'

The '_Seven_' had already been crossed out with spray paint, and the number '_8_' written above it.

'_CARRIERS ONLY_,' the sign blared.

And underneath all that writing, sat the words:

_7 Miles_

Nick paused to stare at it, breath clouding around his head and Isaac's. He read it aloud to Sean.

"Oh God, we might actually make it," the teenager said.

Nick coughed. "Seven miles. Think we can cover that before nightfall?"

They couldn't, but they went on anyway. When it started to get dark, they did not take shelter. Nick continued on, tugging Sean after him with the rope. Rob wandered slowly behind them. Isaac was unresponsive, head lolling on the older man's shoulder.

It was freezing. Only a light breeze drifted over the road ahead of them, but it was so cold that it felt like gusting wind. Isaac trembled on Nick's back. His face was white as the snow they traversed, and he was silent, eyes shut. Sean was all but being pulled along by the rope, stumbling as he tried to stay in pace.

The moon was high above them, lighting everything, just like the night after the train. They passed another sign that said simply, '_SAFETY_,' with an arrow pointing down the road.

Nick brought them slowly up to the lip of a hill, and there it sat.

Buildings with lights in them. The smell of wood-smoke. Cars and snowmobiles parked amongst a throng of little cabins and stores. A tall fence circled it, barbed wire curled at the top. It was warm, and inviting, and they drew toward it like moths to a flame.

On the last bit of their approach, a few hundred yards from the entry gate, Nick could see a little ticket building, all lit up. There was someone inside, drifting to and fro. As they moved closer he came to realize it was an old man, pale and bald, peering at them through a set of binoculars.

He lowered them as Nick staggered up to the ticket booth.

"Kind of late t'be travelin', you think?" the old man asked, opening the tiny window.

"Please, let us inside," Nick said, feeling a tickle in his raw throat. "We need medical attention."

"Ya'll're carriers, right?"

"Of course we are."

"Good. 'Cause if you ain't, we'll infect ya. And we don't want no fresh zombies putterin' about the square."

"What the hell do you think?" Nick asked, irritation flaring in his mind. "Are you blind? Look at my fucking face and ask me if I'm immune."

"Hey, now. No need for any language. I was just bein' careful. You understand."

Sean rocked from foot-to-foot next to him.

Nick glanced at the teenager, at the worried, angry look on his face, then swallowed and forced bland politeness into his voice. On his back, Isaac lay still.

"I apologize, all right? But we really need help. Please, let us in."

The old man seemed to think for a second, then nodded once, and went out to the fence. He didn't carry a gun, Nick noted immediately. He took a key from his pocket and used it to unlock a heavy chain hanging round the gate, then ushered them inside.

"A dog, too, eh? What happened to his ear?"

"Zombies," Nick grunted, readjusting Isaac again as he marched into the safe zone.

As they walked past, the old man spoke up again. "Oh, wait, wait, please."

Nick stopped and turned, centering his good eye on the stranger.

"Your guns. Can't bring 'em inside. Ya'll can leave 'em with me, and when you shake it outta Eight Springs, ya'll can take 'em back. I'll even mark 'em as your'n."

Without hesitation, Nick handed out his Steyr, and Sean his pistol.

The old man nodded with a tiny smile. "If you're lookin' for the doctor, it's that first building on the right there. Used to be the bar. If you want, you can..."

Nick didn't listen to the rest. He turned and hurried toward the building indicated. A red cross had been painted over the bar's title on the door. The lights were on, inside.

Sean jogged ahead and knocked on the door.

With a grunt, Nick brushed past him, and opened it.

"Rob, stay. Stay outside a minute. I'll come back for you," he said to the dog, frowning as he left him on the stoop. Rob sat and wagged his tail slowly.

They came in to a small entryway. Warmth blasted their faces, and compared to the chill they'd been walking in, it felt like an oven. It made Nick's eyes tear abruptly, and he blinked and shook his head to try and clear them. His skin prickled painfully at the introduction of warm air.

Isaac mumbled something at his ear.

"What, Izzy?"

"...Warm..."

Nick coughed. "We need to get him taken care of. Come on."

As they left the entryway and came into the main room - which had once been the bar, obviously - with shelves lined with medical supplies instead of alcohol, plastic sheeting over the bar counter and all other manner of tools and machines that Nick couldn't identify.

Sean let out a strange, excited noise and darted forward. "Wow, look at this stuff, Nick! Where'd they get it all?"

"Who knows? Where's the -"

From behind them, a sharp voice cut into their conversation. "Can I help you?"

Nick turned. Standing in the light was another man, probably around his age. He was shorter than Nick but in much better shape - he looked like he had about a thirty pound advantage. His hair was cropped close to his head, straw-yellow, sticking up to one side as if he'd just been sleeping. With tired, curious eyes, he sized them up, all three of them, and spoke.

"If I had twenty dollars for every survivor that interrupted me in the middle of the night."

Nick opened his mouth to speak, but the man continued:

"Okay, so, which one of you three is worse off? I can only do one at a time."

"Izzy," Nick said, motioning to the slight form on his back. "He got... he had a car thrown at him, and -"

Sean stepped in. "Fractured left tibia and fibula. I think both are complete fractures, neither of them compound. Concussion, mild to moderate. He's got some sutured lacerations that are still healing on his lower abdomen, they might be getting infected."

The man gaped open-mouthed at the teenager, who continued to prattle off their problems.

"I've got a fractured arm, here. I'm not sure whether it's complete or partial." He nodded his head toward Nick. "Fractured ribs, number seven through nine. Possible hemothorax. Ripped sutures on his abdomen, same as Izzy. All of us, malnutrition and dehydration."

Sean took a breath and stared at the doctor with a level gaze.

He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, opened it again. "Uh - uh, all right. Okay then. I'll see to - what was it, Izzy? - I'll see to him first." He opened a door near the back of the bar and waved them in. "Here. Set him on this table."

It was a pool table, lined with plastic sheeting. They set him down carefully, and Sean, without asking, began digging through a cardboard box full of supplies sitting on a nearby shelf. He brought over a handful of syringes, vials, catheters, and gave Nick a small smile.

"Wait outside. We'll take care of him."

The doctor glanced at the kid, then to Nick, and nodded once.

Out in the hall, he found a heavily-used armchair and sank down into it. His chest throbbed and he continued to take short breaths through his nose. He felt dazed.

It was so warm. Like a hot bath. He concentrated on that, on how feeling was beginning to return to his skin, his limbs, his face. It was as potent as a drug, like the diazepam back in the movie theater. Nick sank into the armchair and shut his eyes.

There was a strange ticking noise coming from somewhere - what was that? He cracked open the good eye and glanced around for a few seconds before finding it.

A wall clock.

It read half past nine.

Nick stared, blinked for a few seconds. He hadn't seen a working clock for a long time. Knowing the hour of the day was a strange new thing, for him.

As he was mulling over this information, he heard a door open and shut on the far side of the building. Steps came across the hardwood floor and he turned his head as their owner came round the corner and into the hall.

It was a woman, short and middle-aged. Her red hair was beginning to gray, but her face was youthful and her eyes were bright and intelligent.

Nick tilted his head slightly as she came closer. Why did she look so _familiar_? Had he known her before this crisis? Worry gnawed at him when he thought she might have been an old con, someone he'd cheated out of their money long ago. What if she recognized him? Would she kick him out of the safe zone?

"Hello," she said politely. She made an obvious double-take at his face, but he didn't see recognition in her eyes - only mild curiosity. His scars had probably done it. "My name's Elaine. Joseph told me we had some new people come in."

The voice on the radio broadcast. She was the same woman.

Nick tried his hardest not to stare at her, but it was really tugging hard at his thoughts. Who _was _she?

"You all right?" she cocked her head with a slight smile. "You look a little pale."

Whoever it was, she didn't seem to recognize _him_.

"Fine, no, I'm fine," Nick said, and he wanted to kick himself. _Way to stumble on your tongue._ "I, uh, I'm one of the new guys, yeah. There's three of us."

She had a notebook in her hand.

"Where are you from?"

"Me? Uh, Georg -" he paused to cough wetly into his arm, feeling his face twist with pain. When he was sure he could speak again, he continued, "Wait, no, I'm from D.C. Washington, D.C."

Elaine lifted her eyes and gave him a strange, worried look, then turned them back to the page and scribbled into it with a ballpoint pen. "What's your name?"

"Nick."

"Short for Nicholas?"

"Yes."

She continued to write. "And the others?"

Nick jabbed a thumb at the door behind him. "Sean and Izzy are in there - sorry, Isaac. They're from D.C., too. Got pretty beat up out there. I..."

He trailed off. Elaine was staring at the door. Her eyes were wide and the color had drained from her face. She looked like she'd been punched in the gut, or seen a Tank coming at her down a dark alley.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"No, I..." Elaine looked over at him, eyes wet. Was she _crying_? "The other you're talking about... Isaac. What is his last name? Do you know?"

"I don't."

"Is he a child? A small boy?"

Nick's eyes narrowed. Barely realizing that he was doing it, he rose up from the chair. "That's not your concern, is it?" He placed himself between her and the door.

Elaine shook her head harshly. Christ, she really _was_ crying. "Please, you need to tell me. Is he twelve? Is he -"

She came forward to push past him, and he shoved her away. He'd never hit a woman before - at least, not one that wasn't already a zombie - but he was willing to if it kept the kid from harm. "Back off," he growled. "Isaac is -"

"He's my _son_."

Nick's voice died, and his jaw dropped.

Elaine nodded. "Isaac McKibben. He's my son. He's twelve years old. Red hair. Very shy." She wiped roughly at her eyes. "Please, tell me you have him with you."

"I -" Nick stuttered, his mind unable to catalog this new information, "- you're his_ mother_?"

"Yes! We were separated before the evacuation, now _please_..."

Elaine shouldered past him, with a quiet sob, and shoved the door open. He turned to follow her, but before he could even see inside the room, she'd let out a high, loud wail. Some less-familiar emotion twisted in Nick's gut. He resisted it.

"Isaac! Isaac!"

Nick got to see her go to the boy's side. There was an actual splint on his leg now, not some mangled strip of cardboard. An IV in his arm. He already looked ten times better than before, even though he was still unconscious.

Elaine dropped to her knees, hands shaking as she ran it over Isaac's arm, brushing her fingers through his hair, drawing the back of her hand over his cheek. She sobbed, a low, undulating noise from the back of her throat, as if she were trying to choke on her emotions.

"Oh my God. My little boy," she wailed. "My Isaac, my Isaac."

Sean looked over at Nick. His mouth was a small 'o'.

The mother bowed her head, pressing it against Isaac's, eyes squeezed shut. Her tears dripped through anyway, to tap softly against the plastic sheeting on the table. She was shaking all over, holding her son close, entire body spasming with sobs.

Well.

At least now he knew why she looked so damn familiar.

* * *

_(A/N: The response I received after the events of the last chapter were absolutely staggering. I had no idea Terrence's death would create such a response. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to review that chapter. I really appreciate it._

_Thanks to my beta-reader, Kit._

_I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support I have gotten for this fanfiction. Never in a million years did I ever think I'd make something that merited fanart. It was a dream of mine to have that happen, but to actually _have it happen..._ It's amazing. A really amazing feeling. Thank you so much._

_Coming up next: The Pariah, Part I. A time to grieve and a time to heal._

_The next update will take place on my birthday. Woop woop!)  
_


	25. The Pariah, Part I

The entirety of the Eight Springs safe zone consisted of what was once the lower half of a mountain resort. Various buildings lay tucked up against the foot of the mountains; a visitor center, a few restaurants, the bar. None of them were as large as the hotel that stood on the western side, with a massive curved wall that faced the road Nick and the others had come in on. The ski lifts and gondolas still hung from their tracks, unused. Maps pointed up trails and slopes to the rest of the resort, but the chain link fences prevented further travel.

Sean couldn't believe that the zone wasn't completely filled with people. They had _electricity_, they had food, running water, and medical supplies - _a doctor! - _and yet there were only a dozen survivors inside. It was likely the last place for hundreds and hundreds of miles that wasn't frozen over.

There weren't many people left, he realized. He was one of the unlucky few that had lasted this long.

He'd often wondered, before the apocalypse, at the state of the human species. People in general were terrible creatures, greedy and vicious and territorial.

But that had been _before _the zombies.

Sean had to admit that the two human beings he had left weren't exactly prime examples of their kind - a tiny, emotional twelve-year-old and a scrawny one-eyed man.

The latter was sitting on the plastic-covered pool table in front of him, hands folded tightly together in his lap as the doctor - who'd introduced himself by the name of Dustin - stuck a thermometer into his ear. His jacket and shirt were gone, threadbare and tattered as they'd been after the attack in the movie theater, leaving him only with the ACE wrapped around his torso. Sean tried not to think about his starved appearance.

Nick had been the last to be seen by the doctor, and even then he was claiming he didn't need it and that Sean had been caring for him anyway. The teenager had to all but drag him into the examination room to get him looked at, tugging at him with the arm that wasn't in a splint and sling.

"Just humor me," Sean had said, goading him inside.

It didn't come as a big surprise to Sean that Nick didn't like the doctor at Eight Springs. He acted a lot like when they'd first met, actually - bristling at the man's touch and shrinking away when he came too close. Sean felt the same way that Nick did about strangers - but the older man didn't even want to be _touched _by this guy.

Trust was a funny thing, Sean thought to himself, remembering how much he'd had to do to earn Nick's.

The thermometer beeped merrily, and Dustin lowered it to get a look at the reading. His brows tightened down over his eyes when he saw it, and he twisted his mouth in thought.

Sean noticed this, even if Nick didn't, and spoke up.

"What? What's wrong?"

"One-oh-two," the doctor said, shrugging.

Nick stared at the man, and Sean felt his heart jump up into his throat.

_A hundred and two degrees?_

Immediately his mind went to the gashes - they'd gotten infected, Nick was going into sepsis, they were going to lose him -

Sean panicked and jetted forward, but the doctor waved him off.

"No, go and sit back down. I'll take care of him."

Nick watched the exchange with distant interest in his good eye, masked by a fever-haze that Sean hadn't even _noticed_ until now. He coughed once, screwed his eyes shut in pain, and made a whimpering noise not unlike the ones his dog would make before asking, "Why do I have a fever?" He sounded like he'd all of a sudden come down with a bad cold.

The doctor didn't answer him. He grabbed up the stethoscope and began listening, shutting his eyes in concentration and giving short, brusque orders for Nick to breathe in and out.

"Again," Dustin said. "Deep breath again."

"I think I'm gonna pass out if I keep trying," Nick mumbled, beginning to look a little pale.

The doctor straightened up, grabbing his shoulders to keep him upright. His eyebrows tightened in worry. "Sean, why's he got this bandage around him?"

"For the ribs. He got hit by a-"

Dustin glanced at him. "I don't care if he got hit by a freight train. They shouldn't be wrapped like that." He started unrolling the ACE, studying the dark bruises and awkwardly jutting ribs, the ripped stitching that had scabbed back over again - uninfected. "Broken ribs shouldn't be wrapped," he said, listening again with his stethoscope. He centered it on a particular spot, and Nick watched with detached interest as he offered the ear buds to Sean. The teenager listened for a few seconds, then chewed his lip at the obvious crackling noises drifting into his ears. Kind of like someone twisting a candy wrapper.

"What's wrong?" Nick asked, looking like he really didn't want to hear the answer.

"Fluid in your lungs," Dustin said factually, taking the stethoscope back from Sean.

"Tell me something I don't know."

Dustin went to a supply cabinet and came back with a massive syringe along with a two-inch attached needle.

The older man took one look at it and spat a threat:

"Touch me with that thing and I'll stick it in your eye."

Dustin stopped. "I'm going to try and aspirate some of the fluid from your chest cavity." He glanced at Sean, then to his patient again. "Buck up. It'll help you breathe easier."

"Yeah, 'cause I'm really gonna have a good time with a bunch of broken ribs."

"I'm not a hundred-percent sure of that yet. I can't tell without an x-ray."

Nick leaned a little forward on the exam table - well, plastic-covered pool table - and spoke through gritted teeth. "I already know what the treatment is for broken ribs, '_Doc_. Sean's already been doing it. I don't think I need someone fishing around in my lungs right now."

Dustin sighed and continued to approach, although he kept the needle down. "You wanna know why you're so sick? You have a fever, you can barely stay upright, and you haven't stopped shivering since you got in here -"

"I might be warmer if I got my shirt back -"

"Don't interrupt me. When you don't take deep breaths - especially in the cold - your lungs get all inflamed. Infected. Not to mention you were probably already bleeding into them from the start." Dustin tossed the needle and syringe onto the table, and crossed his arms. "You have a chest infection. Pneumonia."

"_What_?" Nick hissed, half-hugging his side. "How the fuck did that happen?"

"I just told you. It's a pretty common secondary effect of chest injuries. You'd be surprised. Of course, keeping it wrapped like that -" he gave a pointed look to Sean, who blanched and pressed his hand against his own forehead, "- didn't help. You didn't take real deep breaths, that's what caused it to happen."

"Oh, that's..." Nick blinked and swayed somewhat, "...that's fantastic. Real fucking awesome. Thanks a million, _Sean_." He coughed into his hand again, squeezing his eyes shut.

The teenager dragged a hand through his hair and shook his head. "No, I... Nick, I was trying to..." he trailed off weakly, and let out a shaking sigh. Why hadn't he thought of that? He caught Nick's fever-glazed, pained stare and averted his eyes. His fault. It was his fault.

"Breathing'll get easier, with time. Try your best." Dustin went to the supply closet and came back with a handful of pills, all rattling around in the palm of his hand. "Quite a collection here, but take 'em. They'll get you feeling better."

"What are they?" Nick asked, tilting his hand into the light to try and identify them.

"Codeine and Tylenol." Dustin went to another shelf, taking down the box of catheters that Sean had dug through earlier. He pulled out a few of the individually-wrapped objects and studied them before finally choosing one. "I'm gonna put you on an IV for a while, like Izzy. Try and get that infection out of your system before you drown in it."

* * *

They placed him in the same room they'd put Isaac in - a recovery room that had once been used for storage. There were still shelves lining the walls, but instead of alcohol they held blankets, clothes, and books. Isaac hadn't woken up yet - he still lay on one of the beds, noiseless and pale. Elaine, his mother, was right next to him. She hadn't moved an inch from his side since she'd seen him.

Her familiar eyes were filled with curiosity as she looked at the three of them, Nick shaking with the chills of a strengthening fever, huddling into a donated sweater, and Dustin hooking an IV line into the crook of his arm, and Sean mostly just hovering in the background.

"Dustin. Is Nicholas all right?" Elaine asked, worry heavy in her soft voice.

The doctor was calmly stringing up the saline bag. "He should be in a few weeks, Elaine."

Nick, although he looked rather dazed, still caught the words and spoke up. "Weeks? I haven't _got_ weeks."

Dustin stared evenly at him. "If you'd arrived here any later, you wouldn't have _hours_."

The older man fell silent at this, staring at the floor. Sean, feeling more useless than he'd ever felt in his life, went to one of the shelves and pulled down a blanket. Nick gave him a weak, hazy glare at his approach, and the teenager stopped short.

It reminded him of the look he'd received all the way back in D.C., before the long winter roads, before the movie theater, before the frozen lake. It said, '_Don't come near me._'

It said, '_I don't trust you._'

Sean clutched the blanket close to his chest with his uninjured arm, and frowned.

"Okay, I think you're about all set here," Dustin said suddenly, straightening up. He put his hands on his hips and looked at Nick, then over to Isaac. "Try to be like Elaine's kid. Get some rest. That'll help you more than anything else right now."

"How long do I have to have this in me?" Nick asked, tapping a finger against the thin plastic line.

"A while," Dustin grunted.

"A 'while.' Real specific there, 'Doc."

"Hey, you should be grateful. This is probably the last place in the state with medical care." Dustin paused for a second, glancing at Sean. A smirk came over his face. "Well. _Competent_ medical care."

The teenager felt his jaw dropping, and anger rushing hot to his face. "Hey, that's not fair! I -"

"I'm just messing with you, Tiger. Nobody's doubting your surgical skills, at least."

"It was an honest mistake," Sean said. "I was more worried about him being able to breathe than I was about him getting a cold."

"Pneumonia. Not a cold. Big difference there."

"He's still going to -"

"Nope, that's about all the arguing I'm up for at this hour." The doctor shrugged. "I got up too early. Wake me if anyone goes into cardiac arrest," he said, and left.

An awkward silence settled around the room, filled with only the raspy noise of Nick's breathing. Sean turned slowly; the man had his back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him, eyes shut. Elaine continued to stare at her son, as if she expected him to vanish from sight at any second.

The teenager went and sat in the only other chair in the room, at the foot of Nick's bed.

Elaine spoke up softly without turning.

"Don't worry too much about his attitude, Sean. He's like that almost all of the time."

He scoffed. "Bastard's acting like he's the only person around with experience."

She turned her head slightly and smiled at him. "I don't think he knows what to do with another doctor around. Please don't take it personally."

The teenager frowned at her, having a hard time doing so.

Elaine was stroking the top of Isaac's head. "He'll warm up to you. You'll s -"

Underneath her, the little boy jerked and mumbled. Elaine froze up as if she'd been shocked, reaching down and grabbing his hand tightly.

"Isaac," she whispered. She started crying again. "Isaac, baby, it's mommy, she's here now."

His bruised eyes opened slowly and flicked around, taking in the room, the lights, the pictures on the walls. Sean sitting in the chair and Nick reclined across from him. Then he looked over and saw her, and his mouth dropped open. Only small noises came out.

"It's okay, I'm here," Elaine breathed to him, brushing his hair from his eyes.

"Mom?"

"Yes," she whispered, voice breaking. "It's me."

"_Mom_," Isaac wailed. "Mom. Momma." He pawed at her, and she pulled him close and held him to her chest, heaving with sobs, digging her fingers into his hair and clinging to him as if he'd fly away if she so much as loosened her grip.

"Isaac, oh God, Isaac, I thought I'd never see you again."

Isaac could only say the word 'momma,' though it was hard to hear with his face buried in her shoulder. Sean watched with a strange pang of jealousy stirring in his chest, and remembered the last time he'd seen _his_ mother, getting dragged off by that first horde, shrieking at him to _run, run away Sean._ He only wished he'd gotten to tell her how much he loved her, and missed her, just one time.

But that world was over now.

Sean looked at Isaac and Elaine, gripping tight to each other, sobbing. Then he turned his head and looked at Nick, who had his eyes half-open, surveying the scene with that same distant look he'd taken on since they'd gotten here. The man shivered again, and coughed.

Now he was all Sean had left.

Mother and son held each other for a while, rocking softly on the small bed, before she drew back and looked Isaac over again. He stared up at her, wiping at his eyes and sniffling, then looked over at Nick and Sean.

"You guys are okay?" he asked, voice its usual soft tone and slurred by his crying.

Sean shrugged. "We'll live."

Isaac smiled - and started crying harder.

Elaine held him close, rubbing his hair, and turned her eyes to Nick. They were full of joy; bright, grateful and soft, wet with tears. "Thank you, Nicholas. Thank you." She looked at Sean. The expression on her face was unlike any look he'd ever gotten before. "Thank you so much."

He forced a smile onto his face and nodded.

* * *

A recovery period was a privilege that Sean was not used to having. There was no impending food shortage or snowstorm pressing them to move on, no zombies at their heels to give them more wounds to tend to, just warmth and time. They needed it.

It had come too late for Terrence.

On that first night, Sean barely slept, but by the time dawn was beginning to approach on the horizon, he was all but collapsing from exhaustion. He'd gone to the tattered armchair in the hallway and sat in it, and within minutes he'd fallen asleep, despite the dull throb in his arm.

When he woke up, it was mid-afternoon, and he was _starving_.

Elaine took him to the cafeteria - an old restaurant - and the sight that greeted him there nearly gave him a coronary. Food; actual _cooked_ food made in ovens and griddles with power, not half-frozen peanut-butter or stale popcorn or potato chips. Eight Springs even had a cook, a squat black woman whose job was to feed everyone else.

Sean was given a tray and directed to the end of a short line. There were four other survivors here, getting food piled onto their own trays, chatting softly amongst each other. One of them, a young woman with choppy brown hair, saw them and gave a slight wave. Her face was bruised.

"Hi, Elaine," the woman said. "Who's this?"

Isaac's mother smiled and patted her small hand on Sean's shoulder. "Sarah, this is Sean. He helped bring my son back."

"_That's_ him? Wow, you sure are young." Sarah had a wide smile that reminded him of Terrence. It made his chest hurt. "How old are you? Fourteen?"

"_Fifteen_," Sean corrected, trying not to sound too proud.

"_Wow_," she repeated. "You brought him in yourself?"

Elaine shook her head. "There's another one. He's at the infirmary with Isaac."

"How old's he? Eight?"

"Thirty-five," Sean supplied quietly.

Sarah raised her eyebrows.

"I'm sure you'll meet Nicholas eventually," Elaine said. "He is a nice man."

Sean blew air threw his lips in surprise, making a harsh noise. "What? Are you kidding me? I don't think you know him very well yet." She gave him a hopeful, serious look and he laughed. Hard. "He's a total douche, Ms. Elaine."

"Well, he _seems_ very nice," she huffed, as they shifted up the line.

"Probably 'cause he's got a fever and doesn't know what the hell's going on. Wait 'till he feels better. You'll be sorry you said that." The smell of food made his stomach twist crazily beneath his ribs. He caught sight of what there was - stacks of grilled sandwiches and a massive vat of what looked to be tomato soup. "I think I could eat like twelve of those," he said.

"Get some for Nicholas, too. We're going to bring some back for them."

Sean nodded, carefully piling four sandwiches onto the center of his tray, knowing he'd have to carry it with one hand. He thought for another second, and then added a fifth one. Elaine asked the cook to seal the soup up in something and they were handed a huge Tupperware dish full of it. As they were leaving to head back to the infirmary, the young woman, Sarah, called out again.

"Good to hear about little Isaac!"

"Thank you, Sarah. Come and see him soon, okay?"

* * *

Returning to the infirmary brought Sean back into the path of the doctor. Dustin saw him in the main room, gave him that stupid shit-eating smirk, and waved.

"Your dude's feeling better," he said, jerking his head toward the recovery room. "Fever's down."

"Nick. His name is Nick," Sean said.

Dustin ignored him. "Make sure he doesn't throw that up."

The teenager shook his head and hurried to catch up with Elaine, who'd steadfastly ignored them, moving straight down the hall to where her son was. She opened the recovery room door and held it open for Sean.

"Oh! Hi, Sean!" Isaac sat up on the bed, hair sticking every which way. His new, clean clothes actually fit him, the long sleeves hanging at his wrists instead of over his hands. He grinned. "Hi, mom!"

"Hey, baby."

Nick was reading something - a magazine that looked to be twenty years old. Rob had been brought inside and lay on the linoleum next to his bed. The man looked up and blinked as Sean brought over the tray. Dustin had been right about the fever at least - Nick's good eye was clear and lucid. In the sterile white light of the recovery room, it looked to be a bright green, lit up when it caught sight of the food on the tray.

"Is that grilled cheese?"

"I think so."

"Gimme. Now."

Sean sat in the chair at the foot of Nick's bed as they ate, avoiding the man's gaze, unable to forget the look he'd gotten the night before. For a while the only sound in the room was that of chewing and a few intermittent coughs.

"You should dip it in the soup. It's better that way," Isaac said around a bite of cheese and bread.

"Don't talk with food in your mouth," Elaine scolded.

Halfway through the second sandwich and Sean felt full. Too little food over too long a time, he figured. Nick couldn't eat much, either, but they at least got more calories in them - likely more than they'd had at one time in weeks. The crusts and leftovers he gave to Rob, who was already drooling all over the place and nearly bit Nick's fingers off to get the scraps.

"You gotta stop doing that. I want to keep my fingers, Rob."

Elaine swallowed and gave them a smile. "You know, Nicholas, there used to be another dog living here. I'm sure we could give some dog food to you." She glanced down at Rob, who was pawing at one of Nick's feet, whining. "Although there's probably not much left... and that is a very large animal."

"Yeah, they better have a truck full if they want to keep Rob in kibble."

Isaac stared over at them and spoke up. "Hey, Sean. Isn't it cool? Nick and me are sick room buddies."

The man rolled his eyes.

The boy thought for a second, and then, "Hey, Nick."

"What?"

"Did you hear about the guy who drank a gallon of food coloring?"

The older man narrowed his eyes, glared, and didn't speak.

Isaac finished without being prompted. "He dyed."

Elaine laughed delightedly.

Nick groaned and pressed his hand to his forehead. "Get me out of here. Let me recuperate in a cellar or something, please."

"Oh, Nicholas, don't be such a stick in the mud," Elaine said to him, smiling. "Even Dustin says that laughter is the best medicine."

"...No, I'm pretty sure _medicine_ is the best medicine." Nick fiddled idly with the plastic line in his arm, and coughed harshly. He clutched hard at his injured side when he did so, but Sean knew it wouldn't do anything for the pain - likely just a reflex.

"You sound like Mr. Tongue," Isaac said.

"Ugh. Shut up." He coughed again, squeezing his eyes shut.

Sean came over to him and reached out tentatively, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Hey -"

Nick shrugged him off. "I'm fine," he spoke, voice breathless. "I don't want your help, Sean."

The teenager recoiled as if he'd been burned. "Nick, the wrap - I was just trying to help you. I didn't know it would make you so sick. I..." He frowned. "I'm sorry."

"You can apologize when I'm out of this bed."

Sean sighed, but nodded. "Just let me know if you want anything."

"Earplugs," Nick muttered, leaning back against the wall.

Isaac grinned. "Hey, Nick."

"No."

"Did you hear about the guy who got his whole left side cut off?"

Nick groaned.

"He's _all right_ now."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Izzy."

Elaine's jaw dropped open and she turned in her chair. "Excuse _me_, Nicholas?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

"I don't appreciate that sort of language around my son."

Nick looked bewildered for a few seconds, glancing about rapidly. "Uh... yeah. Because he's never _heard _it before," he said with a weak, but sardonic smirk. "We only spent, like, what, four weeks together? How long was it, Izzy?"

"Uh. Four weeks." The boy had turned sheepish, twisting his hands in his lap and staring at them, face red. "I never said any bad words, Mom."

Nick spoke again. "It's a pretty _fucking_ weird thing to be worried about, isn't it?"

Elaine glared. "Nicholas -"

Sean watched the argument with the same curious, awkward look that Isaac had, wondering if Nick had always been this antagonistic or if it was just being hospitalized that put him in a mood like this. It was strange seeing Nick argue with someone that wasn't half his age.

"Yeah, it's definitely the _Goddamn _language that's gonna do him in."

Elaine stood up and marched over to him. She brought her hands down on the guardrails meant to keep people from falling out of the bed, and glared down at him.

"Nicholas. Please keep a civil tongue."

Nick gazed evenly up at her. "You're welcome, by the way. For saving your kid's life. You know, the whole Washington D.C. thing? Breaking out of a military-controlled zone? Starving to death out in the middle of nowhere? It's a lot of fun, you should try it sometime. Also, kiss my ass."

For a few seconds, Sean was certain that Elaine was going to slap Nick in the face.

But she instead bent down, getting close to him, _really close_, and Sean watched him shrink back uncomfortably. There was a sweet, innocent smile on her face.

"Nicholas. I do realize how much I owe you, and I do intend on giving you repayment..." she came even closer, and Isaac let out a worried noise, "...but you don't seem to understand that I'm his _mother_. You're just a man that stumbled upon him. I lost him for a few months; that doesn't mean I intend to stop raising him now." She twisted his IV line idly. "Unless you think you'd rather take over for me?"

Nick was pressed back against the wall. He'd fallen quiet, suddenly looking more timid than Sean had ever seen him. The man's antagonism abruptly shifted into something like sorrow. "I don't think so." His eye searched her face. "I'm not that good at taking care of people," he said. "Obviously."

Elaine's smile fell away. She retreated a little bit, but kept her hands on the guardrail. At the look on his face, her voice softened. "Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because there used to be four of us," Nick said, and he looked away from her, instead staring hard at his IV line. "Another kid."

Sean felt the coldness in his gut, and the prickling heat gathering up in the corners of his eyes. _Terry wouldn't have wanted you to cry, you baby_, he told himself vehemently, _he would have wanted you to move on. _The memory of what happened flooded his mind.

He'd never forget how cold it had been.

"What happened?" Elaine asked, and the question hung heavy in the air.

Isaac was sniffling in his bed.

"A zombie," Nick said, simply, as if that singular word were enough to answer all her questions.

Apparently it was. A mixture of sadness and shame flitted across Elaine's face. "I see," she whispered. "I'm so sorry to hear that. Do you need some time alone?"

"Please," Sean said, and the woman nodded.

She went and kissed Isaac on the forehead, wiping the tears on his cheeks with a thumb. "I'll be right back, baby." When she left, the soft click of the door shutting was like a gunshot in the silence.

They didn't talk for a while. As if they were afraid to shatter the quiet.

Eventually, Sean spoke. "He distracted it."

Nick turned his head to look at him. "What?"

"He... he told me to run, and said he'd distract it." _Run, Sean! Run! _"I... so I... I did. I ran away." _You and me, Destruct-O, come on!_ "God, I shouldn't have. I should have stayed with him. Then maybe he'd..."

Nick blinked rapidly, as if trying to clear his eyes of dust. "No. You did the right thing, Sean. If you'd gotten killed, none of us would have made it here alive." He let out a shaky sigh, like the time he'd told them about how he'd lost his eye. He coughed once, and took a few seconds to catch his breath. "God, another couple of days and he would've fuckin' made it."

"I miss him," Isaac sobbed. "And it's my fault."

Nick had started chewing at his cuticles. "It's not your fault," he said, softly.

"Yes, it _is_. I... the train horn... if I hadn't..."

Sean didn't say anything, although he wanted to. _Yes, it's because of _you_. If you hadn't been pressing every button you saw and -_

"And what if we'd been _outside_ the train when that thing had spotted us?" Nick asked, catching Isaac's gaze. "If we'd been out in a field or on the road? Do you know what would've happened _then_? Trust me when I say we wouldn't be nice and warm in a safe zone with IV's in us."

Sean stared at the floor. It was a strange way to see things like that, but he couldn't help but find truth in the statement. Whether or not they'd been in the train, the zombie would have still been there. They had been _lucky_. So damned lucky that it had attacked them while they were inside it.

It didn't help to stop Isaac's wailing, though. Sean wondered if Elaine could hear him.

"I miss him. I miss him," the little boy cried, rubbing continuously at his eyes. "What'd Terry ever do wrong? What'd_ we _ever do wrong, Nick?"

"_I _did plenty wrong, but you..." the man pinched the bridge of his nose. "You just won the fuckin' lottery, that's all. You're one of the lucky ones."

"I don't want to be lucky anymore."

"Not just that. We're _important, _Izzy."

"Important? Why?"

Nick let out a fragmented sigh through his nose, and his voice became low and quiet. He brought his hand down and rolled the IV line between two fingers like some kind of nervous habit. "Isaac, do you remember what you told me? That day after we first met, in D.C.?" He gazed at the wall, deep in thought. "You said that the world was supposed to break. So we can make it right again. Do you remember that?"

Isaac sniffed. "Yeah, I remember."

"Well, you were right. Iz, you were _right_."

* * *

Sean awoke early the next morning. He picked himself up off of the armchair in the hallway, and padded silently to the recovery room. The windows showed how overcast it was outside, gray and silver and dull. It was early yet; Eight Springs was still sleeping.

He listened at the door for a second, just to see if anyone was awake, but all he could hear was soft snoring. Carefully, he turned the door handle and inched it open.

Isaac wasn't in his bed.

Sean felt panic for a second - but only for a second, because by then he'd opened the door the rest of the way, and saw that the boy was still here.

Nick was curled up, partially upright - it was more comfortable for him to sleep this way - and leaning against the wall. Isaac was tucked against his chest, with the boy's splinted leg out straight on the bed in front of him. One of Nick's arms was pillowed under his chin; the other held the boy loosely to him. There was a thick blanket tucked around each of them.

They were both asleep.

Rob was curled up at the foot of the bed. His remaining ear perked up as he saw the teenager.

Sean went to creep the rest of the way inside, and then thought better of it.

He backed up and left the room. The door clicked quietly shut.

* * *

_(A/N: Happy Birthday to me!_

_This chapter marks the beginning of the 'Eight Springs' arc, which, again, I thought would be quite small and ended up being a fair bit bigger. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but only time will tell, I suppose. If you've ever had broken ribs and/or pneumonia I hope you know what Nick is going through right now. It's horrible. You better hope you never sneeze again for the rest of your life, because _damn_.  
_

_Thanks to my beta-reader, Kit. Don't chew with your mouth full._

_I have recently started playing L4D2 on Expert mode with Realism enabled, thanks to Sanima. I'm having more fun than I thought I would. I'm ridiculous. Two Step references, Two Step references everywhere. Haven't been able to beat Dead Center yet, but we at least got to the third chapter, and that's something._

_Coming up next: The Pariah, Part II. Nick meets a survivor that has more in common with him than he'd like, and finds something that changes everything.)  
_


	26. The Pariah, Part II

Nick was bored.

He'd never had pneumonia before; he thought it would be like having a cold, but instead it had come from out of nowhere and knocked him flat on his ass. It had been a long time since he'd felt so _bad_. For a long while his body had him alternating randomly between dizzying fever and chills, sometimes both, rarely neither. He'd felt pretty good the first few days, but late in the morning on the third he'd started to feel worse than ever — he remembered Isaac telling a joke about _something_, then thinking about how strange it was to feel so hot and so cold at the same time — and after that he knew only a slow whirlpool of gray and black which his sense of time had become.

The fevers were the worst part. He wasn't sure _what_ the hell he might have said during those strange, murky, hot hours where it had been strongest. All he could remember — or _thought_ he could remember — was Sean's voice, murmuring softly to him, but it might have been Dustin's, too. Or Isaac's. Or even Elaine's. It was impossible for him to grasp anymore.

But, on the fourth day, which might have actually been the fifth or sixth, he'd woken up and was surprised that he hadn't immediately wanted to die. The pain was still there — it was going to be there for a long, _long_ time — but there was no fog in his head, no ice in his body. Sean had been there, checking his temperature and looking hopeful, even for him.

"Welcome back," he'd said.

And Nick had mumbled a curse around his dry tongue.

"You're a stubborn old bastard," Sean had continued. "Finally decided to drag your scrawny ass back to the land of the living, Nick?"

The fuzzy, interminable first week trailed into the second.

Now he was _bored._

He slept a lot, mostly because he had nothing else to do. Sean or Isaac were sometimes around, but lately the now-eldest had been going off on his own, and after Isaac had been taken off the line his mother had swept him away and he rarely came by any more. Every once in a while the doctor — Dustin — would make an appearance, but Nick wasn't very fond of him. The feeling seemed to be mutual.

Well, he still had Rob. The dog never wandered very far from his side, attached to him just like when they'd first ran into each other. He slept at the foot of Nick's bed and only got up when the man did.

At least the dog was housebroken.

* * *

_Tap-tap, tap-tap._

Nick pulled himself out of sleep at the noise nearby. He tried for a gentle stretch, and every part of his body protested it. Sleeping half-upright was the worst idea he'd ever had.

Besides going to Savannah, of course.

_Tap-tap, tap-tap_.

He opened his eyes and took a look around. Isaac was out in the hall, balancing carefully on a pair of crutches. He'd gotten pretty good with them. Nick blinked as the little boy hobbled just past the door, turned carefully, and went the other way.

His stomach growled. He wasn't sure if he'd missed breakfast. He was never sure of the time anymore, although it felt like late morning. The new cycle of sleeping and eating and sleeping again felt alien and strange after the journey he'd made so far.

Isaac turned again, crutches tapping on the linoleum as he came back around, tongue held between his lips in concentration. When he noticed that Nick was watching him, he stopped.

"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. Did I wake you up?"

"No. You're fine."

Nick scratched at the IV line leashing him to the bed and yawned, dragging a hand through his hair. At least he'd gotten to shower. All of them had. Nick thought he'd almost used a whole bar of soap, showering until the steam threatened to make him pass out. He'd considered making a break for it since they'd taken the line out of him for the shower, but Sean had hung around outside the bathroom like a mother hen, ready to intercept any escape attempts. The kid was pretty determined to get him better.

He got up off the bed and dragged himself to the bathroom, taking the IV pole with him. It wasn't much more than a broom handle stuck in a shoebox to keep it upright. Still, it was a massive pain in the ass, and it had been ever since he'd started feeling less like a puddle of goo and more like a human being.

But now he could walk here and there without feeling exhausted, and while his ribs still hurt him like a bitch, he was at least breathing a bit easier, and the cough had even let up a little. The magic of IV antibiotics.

Nick leaned against the small counter in the infirmary bathroom, running the water until it was warm and splashing it on his face. The bad eye got really gunked up when he slept, especially recently, when he'd been actually getting eight or more hours a night without being woken to take a shift. That is, if he wasn't shocking himself awake with dreams of icy lakes and subway tunnels.

It had been ages since he'd been able to have a routine, besides 'go to the bathroom in the nearest available toilet, tree, or ditch, and try not to die.' It felt good. Brushing his teeth was something he thought he'd never do again, but here he was, with the little travel tube of toothpaste that Elaine had given him. He was pretty sure he preferred the taste of 'white mint' over the taste of vomit, or blood, or even his own spit after a day without eating.

When he spat out the used toothpaste, he straightened up and studied himself in the mirror for a few seconds, forcing himself more out of curiosity than vanity to see how he looked. It was still pretty bad. The beard was rough. He'd have a hell of a time if he ever tried to shave it, he thought, scratching a bald spot on his cheek and running an idle finger down the scar that had caused it.

After a second, Nick blinked and leaned closer to the mirror, tilting his head and peering hard at the scruff on his chin. Was that —?

Oh God, it was.

A gray hair.

There were a few of them, actually. He thought about counting them all and then changed his mind. It wasn't really that important anymore. Who the hell cared how he looked anyway? Definitely not Isaac and probably not Sean. And they were the only two whose opinions really mattered.

Nick made his way back to the recovery room. He stopped and stared out a window for a few minutes, looking at the late morning snow falling amongst all the other buildings, the cars, the ticket booth they'd entered through. Eight Springs was huge, for a simple safe zone. Everything past its walls lay dead and barren, stretched all the way to the horizon. He wanted so badly to leave and check it out, even just walk around for a few minutes, anything to shift the scenery away from the recovery room of the infirmary.

Nick was surprised to find that there really wasn't anyone in charge here. Everyone contributed in their own way — the cook, the ticket booth guard, the doctor — but nobody ordered anyone else around. It didn't seem like a very smart plan, Nick thought. If there were ever a serious attack by zombies or the military or whatever, it was going to be chaos.

But Eight Springs seemed to be functioning just as well without someone in charge, although it seemed Elaine of all people was the one everyone else went to for help. He'd seen other survivors - strangers - coming around multiple times to ask the woman a question or advice on one thing or another. She'd answered all of them with the same soft smile and quiet voice.

Now, the mother had come around from whatever it was she did in the late hours of the morning, seeking out her son, who only really hung out in one of two places when she was busy: her hotel room, or in the infirmary with Nick.

Isaac was still hobbling around on the crutches when he made it back to the recovery room. He grinned widely when Nick pushed open the door and stepped inside. Elaine, on Isaac's bed, did the same. God, they were like bookends.

"Good morning, Nick," Isaac said as the man made his way back to his comfortable, too-familiar bed.

"Hey, Iz."

"Feeling any better?" Elaine asked.

"Tired."

Isaac laughed softly as Nick sank down carefully onto his bed. "Aren't you always tired?"

"Well, I'm gettin' old."

"Oh, _pfft_. No you aren't. You're younger than my mom!"

Elaine raised her eyebrows. A look of shock settled over her face.

Isaac began to look afraid. He knew he'd said the wrong thing. "What? Mom, it's true."

"Izzy." Nick rubbed his forehead and waved the boy closer to him. He spoke quietly while Elaine stared at them with suspicion. "You never comment on a lady's age. They hate that."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah."

Isaac glanced at his mother, and then back to Nick. "What would _you _say?"

"She doesn't look a day over twenty-five. Say it."

The boy turned back to his mother. "Nick says you don't look a day over twenty-five."

Nick's jaw dropped. "What? Not me! _You're_ supposed to say it!"

Elaine's smile returned. She was trying not to laugh. "Oh, Nicholas, that's really sweet of you." Her blue eyes were bright. "I would have never thought you were such a _charmer_."

"I'm not," he grumbled, glaring at Isaac.

The boy smiled innocently at him.

* * *

An hour later, it was lunchtime, and he was devouring a plate of chicken salad while staring down at the book he'd been working through — '_Care and Maintenance of Large Breed Dogs_.' Sean had found it for him.

Isaac came around and sat on the other side of his bed, flopping down on his back.

"Whew. Too much walking. I need a break."

Elaine hadn't come back with her son this time. Nick hadn't been seeing her as much these last few days. He wasn't sure what to think of her. Sometimes she seemed happy to see him, and other times she wouldn't so much as give him a glance. She tended to waffle between polite indifference and graciously kind most of the time. For the first day, she'd been wary of him, despite what he'd done for her son, as if she expected him to turn on them or lash out at any second.

When he'd finally come back out of the fever, she seemed to be more relaxed around him - allowing Isaac to stay alone with him instead of keeping him under constant supervision.

Being bedridden gave Nick plenty of time to study the people around him. It was something he was good at and would always be good at, even if he couldn't catch things thrown at him anymore or see in the dark.

Elaine had been wronged by a man before, that much he knew for sure. Had it been Isaac's father? It would really explain a lot, but by the boy's behavior he had already assumed the father hadn't been around much. The kid was just too sensitive.

Nick would rather infer and guess to people's personalities than actually get to know them. There was less for him to lose that way.

Staring down at the book, he turned a page. His eye skirted the subtopic — '_Grooming_' — and he continued on, glancing over the pictures.

Isaac scooted over to share the reading and leaned against his left side, where he couldn't see. Strangely, the kid's presence made him more relaxed instead of putting him on-edge. He realized that he liked to have someone over there, to keep an eye on what he couldn't, even though they were inside an infirmary and all that was on his left side was a wall.

"Oh, man, we should give Rob a bath, Nick."

"I don't think there's enough shampoo in the world to make that mutt smell good."

"I bet my mom would like him more if he were clean."

"Rob's fine. If we gave him a bath he'd just find something dead and ro —"

There was a _crack_ and a _bang_ out in the hall, like a gunshot, and they both jumped. Nick grabbed his IV stand and kept it in front of him, gripping the broom handle defensively with one hand. Isaac shrank behind him.

Outside, someone was making a low, moaning, pained cry. He heard three voices talking — one of them was definitely Dustin, the doctor. They sounded worried, all but shouting over the noise of whoever was screaming. Isaac tucked closer to Nick's side, looking out at the door to the hall.

"Did someone get hurt?" the little boy whispered, twisting his fingers in the loose fabric of Nick's sweater.

"I don't know. Don't grab at me like that," Nick hissed, pushing Isaac's hand away.

The noises traveled through the building, ending up at what he knew was the examination room. He couldn't decipher what the voices were saying, but the screaming had quieted a bit.

"Want me to go check it out?" Isaac asked, reaching for his crutches.

"No. Stay here."

As Nick was getting to his feet, the voices started to rise. It sounded like they were having an argument, with two separate parties yelling and a third shrieking in high tones. Nick thought he could decipher a '_Hey, hey, don't_' amongst the muffled yells. The shrieking petered away suddenly, as if someone had punched the screamer in the stomach or slapped a hand over their mouth.

Then, it was quiet.

Nick looked back to Isaac. The little boy swallowed and stared up at him.

"Do you think someone died?"

"I dunno."

There were footsteps rushing across the hardwood floor in the hall, and then the door swung open. It was Dustin. There was blood splashed all up the front of his flannel shirt, and his eyes were pale and wide as he gave a cursory glance inside the recovery room, then asked breathlessly, "Where's Sean?"

"I don't know," Nick answered. "What the fuck's going on?"

"Byron. Byron got attacked out in town," Dustin said. He looked like he was about to throw up. "I need Sean's help." The doctor shook his head, glanced over the room again, and left. His footsteps drew away down the hall.

Nick frowned. "Who the hell is Byron?"

* * *

Later that night, and the man in question lay in the recovery room bed that had once been Isaac's. The big black man was, it seemed, part of a team of three that regularly left the safety of Eight Springs to scavenge for goods in the nearby area. They'd left early in the morning, before Nick had woken, and came back a few hours later, the big Ford truck screeching in through the gate and parking haphazardly in front of the infirmary.

They'd been attacked at the strip mall shopping area a couple dozen miles south, by a single zombie. Around here, they called it 'the Rider,' although Nick had always known it as a Jockey. He'd overheard the other two scavengers out in the hall, talking about it. How it had moved faster than any of them could run, how it had jumped on Byron from yards away. How there had been spines in its heels and elbows that it had dug deep into the survivor's skin, anchoring it tight to the man's body.

It had finally been killed when one of the three managed a lucky shot to its head, but although it had fallen limp on the survivor's body it hadn't fallen off — they'd had to pry it off of him afterward.

The man who lay in the recovery room with Nick had bandages swathed all over his head, from where the Jockey had scratched and scrabbled at his face. There were gouges all over his neck, and deep punctures in his chest and shoulders where the zombie had dug itself in for support.

"It sounded like it was crying," Byron said dreamily after he'd been brought into recovery. "Laughing so hard it was crying." He'd been given some kind of opiate, that much was certain. He obviously wasn't feeling much.

Nick didn't talk. He wasn't enjoying being alone in the room with this stranger. Elaine had come and taken Isaac to her room in the hotel, and Sean was off talking to Dustin about one thing or another. The teenager had been the one helping the doctor with the survivor's wounds, although Nick wasn't sure how much the kid could do with only one working arm. He had no idea where Rob was, either. Isaac had taken the dog with him when he'd left.

Currently the survivor was turning his head toward him, trying to see with all the bandages around his face. "Sarah, is that you, there?" he asked loudly. "Sarah?"

"Nope. Just me," Nick mumbled, keeping his eye on the man.

"Daniel? Is it Danny?"

"No."

"Well, then who the hell are ya?"

"Nobody."

Byron was shifting around, grunting in pain. He was trying to get a look at him, and didn't seem to realize that his face was covered with gauze. With one hand, he reached up and started pawing at the bandages, making whimpering noises in the back of his throat.

"Hey, don't," Nick barked, straightening up. "Don't do that."

"My face. Oh, God, _it hurts_."

"Yeah, I bet it does. Calm down."

Nick glanced toward the door, wondering where the hell Dustin had gone. Or even Sarah, whoever that was. Someone needed to be around to make sure the guy didn't screw up whatever he had going on under that wrap.

But at his sharp words, Byron seemed to force himself to relax against the bed. He let out a long, loud breath that Nick felt envy for. "Where are the others?" he asked, softly. A low whine came from the back of his throat, then faded. "Why am I in here with you?"

"We're in the infirmary," Nick explained, trying to use as few words as possible. "_I'm_ sick. Looks like _you_ got your face ripped off."

Byron started shaking. "Oh, God. How's it look?"

Nick frowned. "The fuck should I know? It's covered in bandages." Why the hell was he talking to this guy, anyway? He didn't even _know_ him, and it wasn't like Nick was exactly fond of making friends. Or meeting strangers. Even _if_ he was one of the last of a dying species.

Which he was.

"My eye. My eye hurts," Byron whined. He reached up a hand to his face again.

Nick raised an eyebrow. The man's voice was really starting to irk him, now. He tried his best to suppress a cough that was starting to crawl dryly up his throat.

Byron went for his bandages again, his soft whines becoming louder wails. "My eye," he cried. "Oh, God, my eye, it really hurts!"

"Hey -" Nick started, and then coughed, hearing his own pathetic noises as he reflexively curled around the source of the pain.

The recovery room door opened and Dustin appeared. Nick hadn't ever thought he'd be glad to see the doctor again. He glanced at Nick, and then at the man on the bed, and hurried inside.

"Crap, Byron! Don't touch that!" He grasped at the survivor's hands, forcing them down to his lap. "You're going to screw up your face doing that."

Byron's cries turned back into low whimpers. "Dusty," he said weakly. "My eye hurts."

"There's no way it _can _hurt. It isn't there."

Nick wasn't looking at them — he was currently trying his best not to breathe and aggravate his ribs further — but he heard the words, and raised his eyebrows.

"What?" Byron asked.

"That Rider gouged out your eye. You don't remember that?"

"No — no, I —" the man sobbed. "Is my other eye still there? Oh my _God_."

"Yeah, you've still got the one. You have a ton of scratches on your face, they were bleeding. I wrapped them up 'cause I don't want them to get infected. Your other eye is fine, Byron."

Nick stared at them, wondering if the Jockey had started clawing eyes out on purpose or if it had just been a lucky scratch. He shivered a little. God, what would he have done if they'd run into one of _those_? They weren't as small as they looked; they would probably just crush Isaac and Sean.

Byron was crying softly as Dustin went and checked him over. He produced a full syringe from his pocket and uncapped it. "I'm gonna give you a sedative, okay, Byron? Just to calm you down a little." He slipped the needle into the man's right arm. "Go to sleep, bucko."

Byron went to say something, but trailed off in a slurred mumble and lay still and quiet on the bed.

Nick swallowed a sigh. _Thank God._

Dustin turned toward him. "And how're _you_ feeling?"

"...Like I want to get out of here."

"You still coughing?"

"Yes."

"Then not yet."

Nick scowled. He'd been on the line for ages already. It was enough for him to be trapped in the infirmary with nothing to do, but to be stuck with some stranger was a whole different can of worms. He just wanted _out_, he wanted to see something else other than drab brown walls and cramped storage shelves. The smell of disinfectant and dust had begun to grate on him; when he looked out the windows he could just imagine what it smelled like out there, all trees and snow and _fresh air_.

Dustin was offering him a grin. It was one of his usual expressions - partly smug, partly mischievous. "I'll be sure to tell Elaine you said hello."

Nick scratched his chin. Hadn't dinner just been a little while ago?

"It's a bit late, isn't it?"

Dustin just smiled and turned to the door.

Nick knew the 'getting lucky' look when he saw it, and blinked. He hadn't thought of quiet, strong Elaine going for a guy like the doctor. Somehow he didn't see her putting up with his attitude. Isaac wouldn't approve.

He sat in the quiet room, leaning against the wall, and shut his eyes.

* * *

Nick opened them when the door creaked quietly open. When had he fallen asleep? It was dark, and his reflex was to panic, but someone had just turned the lights off. He saw Sean's shadow slipping inside; he could hear the _click-tap_ of Rob's nails on the hardwood floor. The boy didn't turn the light on, probably to avoid waking the other patient in the room.

The dog crossed the space to Nick and set his massive head next to him, sniffing.

"Hey, bud," Nick breathed, reaching out to pet him.

"Hi, Nick," Sean whispered, turning toward him. "I didn't think you'd be awake."

"I'm a light sleeper."

"Yeah, I know. Did you meet Byron?"

"Unfortunately."

Rob paced a few times next to the bed and then jumped up onto it. Nick tucked his legs up closer to his body to allow the dog some space. Rob turned a circle before laying down, setting his muzzle on his ankle.

"God, you should have _seen_ it. His face is _messed up_."

"More than mine?" Nick asked, trying to put humor into his whisper.

"You've at least got a _good_ side."

"Very true." He paused. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"It's four in the morning," Sean said, sounding partly defensive. "I like to get up early."

Nick suppressed a yawn. It felt like he hadn't slept at all. Always a wonderful way to start a day.

Sean fumbled to the edge of his bed and squeezed in next to the dog. "How're you feeling, Nick?"

"Better."

"You're not coughing much anymore, are you?"

"No, not really."

"Do the ribs still hurt?"

"Like a bitch."

Sean chuckled. "I bet you want out of here, huh?"

Nick smiled, even though he knew the kid wouldn't be able to see it in the dark. "I thought the week down in D.C. was bad. This is worse." He scratched his cheek. "Is there any way you can convince Dr. Assface to pull the line? I think I'll be okay without it."

"I could, yeah," Sean said, and Nick felt a strong surge of hope, "but I want you to take care of yourself, okay? I don't want to have to follow you around and make sure you eat."

"I'm pretty sure I won't have trouble with that."

"Are you okay with taking more pills?"

Nick ran his fingers through the thick fur on Rob's shoulders. "If it gets me off this IV, I'd swallow a whole bottle at once for you, kid."

* * *

It was just after breakfast and he was enjoying the warm feeling of being full and the welcome quiet of the other man sleeping, when someone he'd not yet been introduced to came into the recovery room. It was a rather short woman with cropped brown hair and a black eye. She glanced over Nick, and then saw Byron sleeping in the other bed. She went to him, taking a seat in the same chair Elaine had used when Isaac was recovering.

"How long has he been asleep?" the woman asked, not looking at him.

He scoffed. "The hell should I know?"

She paused at his tone and turned her head a little, studying him. Sizing him up. "Who are you? Are you new?"

Nick threaded his fingers together behind his head and leaned against the wall. "Wow. Observant."

He watched her turn the chair toward him. Anger swept across her features, followed by curiosity, and finally mild amusement. "Yes, I would definitely remember your face."

"It's tough to forget," Nick agreed. A month ago, he'd have shot someone for a comment like that.

The woman seemed to think for a few seconds. "Wait." She tapped a finger on her chin. "Aren't you the guy... yeah, you're the one who brought Elaine's little kid back! Nicholas, right?"

"What, does _everyone_ know about that?"

"News travels fast when there's only eight people to tell it to." She glanced back at Byron, assuring he was all right, before rolling the chair closer to Nick and sticking her hand out to him. "I'm Sarah. Sarah Peterson."

He kept his hands behind his head.

"Aren't you gonna shake?"

"I'd rather not."

She returned her hand to her knee. "God, you're weird. So should I call you Nicholas or do you usually go by Nick? Nicholas sounds a little archaic, don't you think?"

He brought one hand to his forehead and rubbed it. Sarah reminded him of Ellis, and not in a good way. The last thing he wanted around was another person who couldn't shut the fuck up. "It's Nick, usually," he said, absently tracing one of his scars with a fingertip. It had become somewhat of a nervous habit for him recently.

"That's cool. I've never met a Nick. Plenty of 'Nicole's, though. Weird."

He was beginning to miss Isaac's jokes, which he took as a _really _bad sign.

Sarah continued speaking. "So what do you do? Besides rescue kids?"

Nick groaned softly, drawing his hand down toward his eyes. "I don't do much," he said, keeping his voice flat, hoping that if he were dull enough with his answers, she would stop asking questions.

Thankfully, Byron gave a low, shuddering moan on the bed behind her. She dropped the conversation as if it had never existed in the first place, and turned back to him. "Hey, 'By," she said. "It's Sarah. Can you hear me?"

He groaned. "My head hurts."

She began to explain to him what had happened, and Nick ignored it, even when Byron started sobbing about it again.

There was the rattle of the door handle being turned, and in walked salvation in an over-sized sweater: Sean, with medical tape in one hand and gauze in the other. He looked at Byron but walked to Nick. Sarah was holding the big black man in her arms, rubbing his back.

"Please tell me you're going to cut me loose," Nick said.

"It took some convincing, but he says he'd rather take his chances with you taking your pills than have to deal with your grumpy ass some more." Sean pulled around the chair that sat on the foot of the bed, and held out a hand. "Give me your arm, you big baby."

* * *

Nick stood on the stoop of the infirmary, staring out at the safe zone with a slight smile on his face. The sharp smell of pine trees drifted in on the air, fresher and cleaner than he imagined. Overhead, gray clouds threatened more snow. Eight Springs was a little bigger than he'd thought, but he'd only been able to look out windows at it. The hotel was simply massive, and that was what Sean guided him to, taking the lead through a well-worn trail of footprints through the snow.

They went up the ramp and to a set of stairs, and paused at the double doors to the lobby. The teenager placed a key in his hand.

"This is to our room. Number 1052."

"Uh, okay." Nick blinked. "What, I don't get my own room?"

"That's something you'll have to request later," Sean said, pointing out at a small building down the way. "There's the storage building. You can get what you need in there. Blankets, clothes, whatever." He motioned to another, taller place, with wide bay windows and a restaurant sign hanging from the roof. "That's the cafeteria. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at one, dinner at six." Sean turned back toward him. "You got all that?"

"I think so."

The teenager turned and started back down the stairs.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

"Back to the infirmary. I need to talk to Dustin about something." Sean stopped. "Oh yeah, Rob is with Isaac and Elaine. They're room 1012. Okay?"

And he was off again.

Nick watched him go, then turned back to the hotel and pushed open the lobby doors. It was the first large, open, indoor place that he'd seen in a long while that wasn't filthy, or filled with corpses, or cold and dark. There were a few chairs, and a couch in front of a television set. As he passed inside toward one of the main hallways marked '1000-1075,' he saw a glass door to his right. Through it, he could see a swimming pool. The water was frozen. He shivered and looked away.

On one wall there was a cork board, filled with missing persons reports, letters, things like that — like what the walls of the puny little safe houses had become. A few handwritten memorials to those who had died, and some pictures. Nick gave them all a cursory glance, and made to turn away when his own name caught his eye. Someone else had posted a photo on top of it; he plucked the thumbtack out to reveal the lined paper behind the old Polaroid.

It was his name, all right. He took the faded yellow paper off the cork board and read it, feeling his heart slowly crawling further and further up his throat.

_'Nick._

_Coach and Rochelle keep telling me your dead, but I dont beleve it.  
_

_I know your still out there somewhere Nick and if you read this I want_

_you to know that I havent forgoten. Remember when we crashed that_

_helcoptor into that swamp? I never got to thank you. and also for_

_when you shared your food with me in New Orlins. I miss you._

_Rochelle and Coach seem difrent without you around, like they are_

_meaner to make up for you being gone. They miss you to I think._

_How is your eye? I never told you this but I always thought it looked _

_really cool. Okay well Im running out of space on this paper so I _

_better stop writing. We came through here December 17th._

_Still heading north, to Maine. Meet you there, buddy. If not.._

_RIP Nick, 1974 (?) - 2009_

_Ellis'_

He felt frozen in place. The only thing he could move were his eyes, the good one flicking back and forth over the scrawled handwriting, over and over again. _Still heading to Maine._ They were alive. _Came through here December 17th._ They were okay. All three of them.

They thought he was _dead_.

Nick blinked back the sudden rush of warmth in his eyes.

"Hey, Nick, I forgot to tell you that —"

Sean. The teenager stopped talking when he caught sight of Nick's face.

"Hey, you okay? Nick, are you all right?" he asked, worry in his tone. He crossed the lobby to his side, saw the paper, and blinked up at him. "What's that?"

Wordlessly, he handed the boy the note.

Sean's sharp eyes flashed back and forth as he read it, eyebrows tightening down over them as he took in the scrawled words. "Nick, this... this is..."

"It's from them," he said hesitantly, as if saying it aloud would make it a lie. "They came through Eight Springs, Sean." The tears were painful in his eyes. He wiped ineffectually at the good one, trying to halt his racing thoughts as the kid returned the paper to him.

"They think you died, Nick."

"I know."

"They aren't here."

"I know."

"That note was written three weeks ago, Nick —"

"_I know, God dammit!_" He snarled, suddenly, and Sean flinched. "Do you think I don't understand that? Do you think I'm not aware of how fucking far away they are? Of how they — they —"

Nick couldn't talk anymore. He turned away from the teenager and forced a shuddering breath through his chest, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain from his ribs, leaning against the wall with one hand and pressing the other to his forehead. The paper crinkled against his skin.

"Fuck," he whispered. "_God dammit, Ellis_."

Sean was still there. "Do you think —"

Nick didn't allow him to finish. "Go away."

The teenager fell silent, but didn't move.

"Did you not fucking hear me? Get the _fuck out of here,_ Sean!" In his anger he flung the paper at the kid; he felt the overwhelming urge to rip the cork board off the wall and throw that at him, too.

Sean's eyes met his for a split-second, terrified and sad.

Then he turned and walked off without another word.

Nick turned back to the wall, as if all his answers could be found there. He dragged a hand through his hair, feeling the tears welling up again.

Fucking pathetic.

The words in the letter played over and over in his mind. He could almost hear Ellis saying them.

_I miss you._

His legs wouldn't hold him up anymore; he sank slowly to the floor, huddling against the wall, one hand twisting painfully in his hair.

_Meet you there, buddy._

Why?

Why hadn't they stayed here? Why had they gone on? They could have lived here, in Eight Springs, warm and sheltered, and Nick would have found them.

The map, he thought, suddenly.

It was still marked with the safe zone.

The safe zone_ he _was supposed to go to.

They'd gone there so he could find them.

_RIP Nick._

Too late. He'd been too slow in his travels, and now he was never going to reach them. He thought of that road northward out of Eight Springs, the deep snow, the barren fields. That wasteland was what they had crossed, or had attempted to. And that was what he had to cross, too.

He squeezed the tears from his eyes — they were immediately replaced by more — and curled up against the wall, unable to stop himself from crying, unable to hold it back like he held everything else back, the pain in his chest and from his hand in his hair were the only things reminding him that he was really here, that he was really alive, and that _they _—

_I miss you._

—_ were gone._

_

* * *

_

_(A/N: The misspellings on Ellis' note are intentional, obviously._

_Thanks to my beta-reader and super-spider-knitter, Kit. A very special thanks to Yaro, Sanides, SuperPineapple, Ekatii, Inamkur, Mojik, Annie, and Sydleys for making me some really fantastic fanart. You guys are just too awesome. [If ya'll want to see it, check my favorites on my Deviantart (link in my profile).] Realism Expert update: we are still stuck on The Mall, and I'm still obnoxious. I do not do Nick justice when I play him. He probably doesn't panic and run around in circles while screaming like a sissy when a horde surrounds him. Or, y'know, die constantly._

_What constitutes as an 'incap,' anyway? Like how would that work in real life? Zombies pushing you down on the ground? Dazed? You got tripped? Seriously, let me know. Ellis laid there for like five minutes because we were too busy to pick him back up, but all that happened was he got slapped by three zombies. How does that even _work_?  
_

_Coming up next: The Pariah, Part III. Nick makes some decisions.  
_

_EDIT 2-8-11: Finally figured out how to get the long dashes [_—_] to work. I had to copy/paste them from my Tumblr, wat. I wish Wordpad would use them, or at least have ff.n not delete my double-dashes every time I upload, forcing me to go through manually and enter them. Now to do the same for the other chapters. [LOL like I have time for that /shot]_

_EDIT 2-12-11: I realized that the 'teaser' at the end of this chapter does not match up to the next one. Whoops!)  
_


	27. The Pariah, Part III

"I'm going to find them."

"Nick, you are a freaking retard, you know that?"

The older man lay on his back on his mattress, staring passively up at the bland white ceiling of their hotel room.

Sean sat in the opposite bed, trying— with futility— to talk him out of his decision.

"You're going to freeze to death."

"I don't care."

"Yeah, you've said that before."

Nick coughed into his hand with a wince. "Because it's true."

"Really? You don't care if you die? 'Cause, you know what? _I_ freakin' care, Nick. You think I wanna see you run off like this because of a stupid letter? I just spent the last week-and-a-half dragging your ass back from the grave!"

At this, Nick pushed himself partially up. "You knew from the start that I was trailing someone else, Sean. Why are you so fucking surprised that it's true?" Rob wagged his tail as Nick wrestled himself into a sitting position, hanging his arms between his legs to scratch the dog's head. "I'm going to find them, Sean. That's all there is to it."

"You're gonna kill yourself."

"How many times have I heard _that_ before?" Nick asked, rolling his eyes. "And look at me. I'm still kicking."

"Only because of luck," Sean argued. "If we hadn't gotten you on that IV, you _would_ have died. And you almost did anyway! Do know you how high your fever was?"

He groaned. "I don't _care_."

"A hundred-and-five! Nick, a _hundred-and-five._ You're lucky you don't have brain damage!"

"Can we stop talking about that? Yeah, I know, I was really sick. Now I'm better. And I'm going." Nick straightened up and pushed himself off the bed. "I can't stop _now_. I've come too far already." He went to the door, Rob trotting at his heels.

"Nick, _please_."

The plaintive tone in Sean's voice made him stop and turn.

He'd never seen the kid look so distraught. "Please, at least, just... just stay a while, okay? Give yourself a little more time to heal." Sean stared hard at him. "I'm not asking you as your doctor. I'm asking you as a _friend_. Please."

Nick set his hand on the door handle and twisted it. "I don't have friends, Sean. Just people who put up with me." He pushed the heavy door open and left.

* * *

Nick sat in the cafeteria, staring down at his untouched bowl of soup. The low murmur of the other survivors' voices speaking sounded like static to his ears. He sat by himself; the only three people who ever tried to approach him weren't here. Everyone else gave him a wide berth. Apparently word had spread about his personality as well as his actions.

He rolled the spoon around in the bowl absently, staring hard at the little noodles and vegetables drifting to and fro through the broth, but there were no answers to be found there. The soup had grown cold long ago. He leaned his cheek on his other hand and repressed a sigh. It hurt too much to do it.

It was the fourteenth day of January.

Terrence had died on New Year's Day.

And he'd missed the others by nearly a month. It had been two months since he'd seen them.

Although he wanted to, Nick couldn't really blame them for believing he was dead. Two months was a pretty generous life expectancy nowadays.

And the ship...

Well, _he_ wasn't sure how he'd gotten off of it alive. How could he hate them for assuming the worst from _that _situation?

The sound of roaring water, filling hallways and rooms and flooding through windows and doors, replayed in his mind. It had been so _loud_, a constant bellowing hiss that had come from all around him, inching closer and closer. He'd backed further and further away, taking every corridor and door he could find, but the water had cornered him like a predator corners its prey, grabbing at him with a million icy hands.

"Excuse me."

The voice tugged him harshly from his thoughts, and he lifted his head to see someone standing in front of him. It was that man from the infirmary— Byron. His scratched face was all scabbed up now, and there was a white patch of gauze over his right eye. The remaining looked down hopefully at him.

"Can I sit here?"

Nick frowned, and glanced around the rest of the cafeteria. "There's plenty of other spots to sit," he grumbled, looking back down to his soup.

"I know that." Byron slipped into the booth seat across from him, carefully setting down his food tray. "I, uh... I met you in the infirmary," he explained, needlessly. He went for his fork, fumbling with the utensil when he finally grabbed it. "I was wondering if I could talk with you for a bit."

"Why?"

"No reason, I just —"

"There's always a reason," Nick said, rolling his spoon between his fingers. He glanced down at Byron's awkward attempts to get at his pasta. "Keep one hand on the plate. It'll help you to find it better."

The black man stopped, and slowly followed his direction. "Thank you."

Nick placed his spoon back into his bowl and made to leave.

"Wait. Please wait."

"I'm not interested in conversation."

"Neither am I." Byron was trying to get up to follow him. "I talked to Sean. He said you lost your eye from a zombie, too. Is that right?"

Nick turned and glared at him. "It's none of your goddamn business."

"Okay, that's fair. I just was hoping... that maybe you could help me out a bit. Give me a couple pointers." Byron tried to smile but it just looked strange with all of his scratches and bruises. "Come on, bro. We've got something in common. Help me out, here."

"Go ask Dustin. He's the doctor."

"He told me to go to _you_."

Nick shook his head and started toward the kitchen. "Not interested."

Byron jumped up and scrambled after him. "Hey, please. Come on. Don't be that way."

He left his still-full bowl on the bar counter and made for the door, whistling for Rob to follow.

The black man persisted, leaving his own meal on the table and keeping on Nick's heels. "Maybe there's something we can work out. A trade. There's got to be something you want," he said, "my friend Daniel takes care of storage here. I'm sure there's something he can —"

"I don't _want_ anything," Nick cut in, pushing the door open. "I don't want to help you. Leave me alone." He stepped out onto the windy path and went toward the hotel, hoping Sean wouldn't be there — he wasn't sure he could put up with the kid any more today.

Byron kept following him, all the way to the hotel, up the stairs and into the lobby.

Nick turned and glared at him.

"Why won't you help me?" The black man asked as soon as he made eye contact.

"Because I don't give a shit about you."

Byron's scratched-up eyebrows raised. "Sean was right about you." His expression was that of careful neutrality. He was obviously pissed, but he was keeping a polite facade. "You really are an asshole."

Nick let out a short breath — his current version of a sigh. "Great. Glad you got that figured out." He moved toward the hallway to his room again.

Again, the black man followed.

"Jesus _Christ_." Nick hissed under his breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose and stopped again. "What do I have to do to get you to go the fuck away?"

"I want to learn how to shoot a gun."

"Get a scope."

Byron smiled. "Just show me how you do it."

Nick groaned.

"Come on. I won't take up much of your time."

"All right, all right," Nick breathed. "But this better be fucking worth it. You better have something good for me."

"Name it. I'll see if I can't find it for you."

He thought for a second. "A car."

"A car?"

"Did I stutter? Get me a car. A _truck_. Something big. Something that'll take me through the mountains." He shrugged. "That's my going rate for physical therapy, _Byron_."

"Well, all right then. I'll see what I can do for you." The black man grinned. "Let's go out to the shooting range. I've got a pretty decent hunting rifle. Show me."

"Let me get my gun," Nick grumbled, ordering Rob to stay in the lobby. He didn't want Byron to miss and accidentally shoot his dog, although it wouldn't have surprised him if it did. His luck was just _that_ terrible.

* * *

The shooting range was, predictably, an old bowling alley. Nick held his Steyr as he walked toward the lanes, and it was a comforting feeling to have the heavy rifle back in his hands. He turned it over a few times and found that Joseph had indeed written his name on it, in silver Sharpie on the gray stock — '_NICHOLAS_.'

He really wished people wouldn't call him that, especially Elaine. It reminded him too much of Coach.

Byron had a hunting rifle, a bit like Isaac's model. He led Nick down toward one of the lanes and motioned toward a chair. "Set your gun on this." He handed him a box of rounds. "You go first. I want to see you do it." He kept at Nick's blind side, holding the hunting rifle with one hand.

Nick began to kneel and settle the Steyr's barrel on the chair, then paused.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't stand there with a loaded gun," he said, turning his head and half-turning his body to catch a look at the other man. "I'm sure you can understand that."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Of course. Sorry," Byron apologized, stepping around to where he could see.

Nick returned to his gun.

"You're real sensitive about people over there?" the man asked him casually, obviously trying to make small talk — or, at the very least, attempting to get to know him better.

"You aren't here for conversation, _bro_," Nick warned, staring down the scope of his rifle.

"I just wanted to know if it was gonna be the same for me."

"Depends."

"On what?"

Nick fired. The gun's report was massive in the wide, empty place, and the kickback sent little vibrations to his ribs that sparked pain all along his chest. He grunted softly, but returned his eye to the scope, seeking out where his bullet had hit. It was off-center of the red target Byron had drawn and pasted up on the wall, but not by much.

He ejected the spent round and slid the bolt back into place. It was sticking a little. He'd need to clean it again, before he left — whenever that would be. Soon.

"Good shot," Byron said, voice partly envious and partly surprised.

"Mm," Nick muttered. "This is a good gun."

"Where'd you get it?"

He fired again, and again winced at the kickback. He'd have to do something to fix that. "Washington, D.C.," he bit out, finding that his second shot had gone just down and to the left of his first.

"What kind is it?"

"Steyr," Nick said, unsure if '_stare_' was the correct pronunciation. He repeated with '_sty-ur_.' "I don't know how to say it. Some French word, I guess."

Byron knelt down at the chair across from him, mirroring his actions as he set the rifle against the seat. He was still fumbling a lot, his brain unable to process how close or how far away things were anymore.

Nick remembered himself first getting used to it— he'd bumped into everything, then. Walls, doors, tables, people, it didn't matter. He'd been gawky like a hormonal teenager, and just as irritable. But Ellis... Ellis had really stuck to him like glue, always keeping himself on the side Nick couldn't see out of, surreptitiously guiding him away from objects he might stumble on. The stupid kid had been really persistent.

_'Come on, now, Nick, how you gonna shoot zombies again if you sulk in your room all day?'_

Nick had hated it then. Now just thinking about it made his heart hurt.

Lack of depth perception was probably the worst, he mused to himself, and then he said it aloud.

"Yeah, I know," Byron said. "I've got about twenty stubbed toes already. Does that get any better?"

"With time," Nick said. "Try to touch things more. Get a feel for them."

He wasn't much of a therapist. Most everything he was _still_ learning to do.

"Okay."

Byron was tilting his head awkwardly, trying to shoot right-handed and look down the sight with his left eye. Nick watched him fire a few shots, then still the gun and gaze out at the target.

"Did you hit 'em?"

"No." He sounded ashamed.

"Try again." Nick sat down, keeping on hand draped over the scope of the Steyr. "Switch hands. You'll be able to see easier."

Byron tried. "I don't think I can fire this way, Nick."

"Well, try it anyway."

As the big man shifted rifle about and attempted to shoot left-handed, a soft sound behind them drew Nick's attention away. He turned round and saw Elaine there. She was wearing a heavy jacket with fuzzy lining that bunched up around her slim neck. Her eyes caught his and she smiled.

"What do you want?" he asked, before she could speak.

Elaine, like Sean, had quickly learned how to brush off his attitude. Her smile just widened. "I saw you come down here with Byron. I was curious about what you were doing in here."

"He's gonna teach me how to shoot with one eye," Byron said.

"I'm not teaching you shit. You asked me to show you how I did it. That's exactly what I'm doing."

She stepped down toward the lanes, taking a seat on one of the benches. "Isaac told me that you're really skilled with a gun, Nicholas."

He turned back to the Steyr, curling his legs under the chair. "Well, _he's_ better."

"Yes, he wants to come down here when he's able to walk without those crutches."

"I'm surprised you're going to allow him to have a gun."

"Oh, I never said I was going to let him _do it_."

Nick kept staring down his scope, keeping his interest on the Steyr and idly wondering if Dustin had indeed gone to see her the previous night. She wasn't acting any different, so at least his personality, if nothing else, wasn't rubbing off on her.

Byron had stopped shooting, and Nick slowly realized that nobody was speaking anymore. He sighed and looked over; the black man was staring expectantly at him. Elaine had one hand on her chin, her bright eyes studious as she looked him up and down.

And Nick found he really hated to be stared at.

"Uh," he said. "What's the problem?"

Byron motioned to the Steyr. "I thought you were going to shoot?"

"I wasn't aware I was going to have an audience," Nick muttered, looking at Elaine.

"Oh, don't mind me," she said, raising her hands. "Really, Nicholas, just pretend I'm not here."

_Hard to do when you keep staring at me_, he thought, but then he again returned his eye to the gun. He centered his aim, reaching up with one hand to adjust the scope a bit. It was going to need some tweaking, too, before he'd be comfortable enough to use it in a bad situation. The stock was cool against his cheek, and the trigger was smooth and worn beneath his finger.

His third shot landed just shy of the first.

Elaine spoke up quietly. "Did you hit it?"

"Yes."

"You're firing pretty slow," Byron piped up. "How do you go so slow if there's a zombie coming at you?"

"I don't," Nick said.

"Well, how's your aim when you need to fire real fast?"

"Good enough," he murmured.

There was a dare in the black man's voice. "Show me."

Nick glared. "When did this become a demonstration of _my_ skill? _You're_ the one who wants to learn how to do this shit." He jerked back the bolt, listening to the cartridge's tinny clatter on the ground.

"Come on, Nicholas," Elaine said. "I would hate to learn that my son had lied about you."

He glanced at her. _You too, huh_? Nick resettled his finger on the trigger.

In about six seconds, he emptied the last seven rounds in the magazine. The gun's bark was deafening as he pulled the trigger, yanking the bolt back and in with every shot, fingers dancing over the mechanisms of the firearm. It was so familiar to him — he knew it in the way that lovers know each others' bodies, every scratch and ding that spelled out its history with him, its weight, when it wasn't acting up to par. Using it required the same mental effort as breathing.

When he was done, Nick ejected the final round and lifted his eye from the scope, gritting his teeth a little at the pain the kickback had caused him.

Byron's mouth had dropped open. Elaine wasn't talking, either.

The paper target fluttered as it returned to its original position. All ten shots he'd fired were packed together neatly in the middle. Nick let out a little breath and felt a smile tugging at his lips as he looked back to Elaine.

"You were saying?"

* * *

Nick spent another few hours in the shooting range with Byron before the black man seemed comfortable enough to practice on his own. He returned his Steyr to Joseph and made his way to the cafeteria for lunch. Elaine followed him all the way there.

Rob charged him as he entered, jumping up to try and lick him in the face. Nick shoved him away, trying to keep the mutt's huge feet from kicking him in the chest. "Oof. Get down, Rob." He saw Sean and Isaac eating together in a booth, looking pretty somber. The youngest didn't even look at him.

When Nick came up with his Salisbury steak, he waved the eldest to move over so he could sit.

"Where were you all day?" Sean asked before slowly stuffing a bite of his dinner in his mouth.

"With Byron," he replied simply, spearing a few of the obviously fresh-from-the-can green beans with his fork. "In the bowling alley."

"You should have told me. I was worried."

Nick shrugged and took a bite. The novelty of food was beginning to wear off, and so was his appetite. He wasn't sure if it had been the note or the pneumonia that had done it, but he was again finding that he had to force his meals down. He knew Sean was watching him, making sure he was eating, and feigned his enthusiasm.

Elaine came over and sat across from Nick, next to her son.

Suddenly, nobody was talking, even though Isaac had cleared his plate and was just twirling his fork on the edge of his tray. Sean was pushing around the last of his potatoes with his utensil, making a little hill.

Nick worked at a chunk of his Salisbury steak. It was almost overbearingly salty and tough, sinewy, reminding him of a piece of beef jerky. He forced it down with some water, glancing around at the others. Isaac still wouldn't look at him.

"Hey, Izzy," he said, trying to coax the boy into a response. "You wanna come down next time? We can practice together."

The little boy's eyes flicked up to his. They were bright, rimmed with red. He'd been crying.

"Is there gonna be a next time?"

Nick felt his gut churning either from the food or because of the look on the kid's face. Isaac knew he was leaving. Sean had probably told him. He looked at the teenager and scoffed.

"Couldn't keep your mouth shut, could'ja?"

Sean's sharp eyes were dark and sad. "I'm not going to lie to him. That's _your_ job."

Nick scowled. "So that's how you're gonna be, huh? I decide to go after them — what I was _originally_ doing before I ran into you — and you're gonna be an ass to me?"

"Nicholas —" Elaine started, but Sean spoke over her.

"This is the stupidest decision you've ever made, Nick. And, yeah, I remember the movie theater. '_I'm Nick! Let's go into _this _room even though there's blood all over the door! It won't be a _freaking trap!'"

"Come on, that has nothing to do with this."

Sean continued, mocking Nick's Eastern accent and putting a fake roughness into his tone. "'_Yeah, I'll just starve myself so you three can have a snack! What a _great _idea!_'"

Nick glared at him, drawing himself up. "You ungrateful little —"

"'_I'll just wander down into this military zone, I _definitely_ won't get _shot!'"

"Shut the _fuck_ up, Sean!" Nick snarled.

The boy didn't shrink back.

So he shoved him, hard, into the wall that the booth was built into, and kept him there with one hand. Sean gasped, and terror — pure, abject terror — came into his eyes.

Nick bent down close to him, even while Isaac wailed about it and Elaine had raised her voice, trying to break apart their fight. Sean's fingers dug into his arm while he squirmed in the seat.

"Let me go, Nick —"

"No. You listen to me, Sean, 'cause I'm not gonna repeat myself. You might _think_ you're hot shit because you put some stitches in me and pulled a bullet out of my leg, but you know what? I didn't have to take you with me out of D.C., and I didn't have to drag you along on a _fucking rope_ to _this _place. I sure as hell didn't have to starve myself to try and keep your ungrateful ass alive, either."

Sean was staring up at him, not speaking, face red, eyes wide and unblinking.

Nick gave him another shove. "Learn some goddamn respect, you piece of shit," he growled, before letting him go. He glared at the kid for a few more seconds before getting up from the table. Elaine was calling after him and Isaac was still crying, but he ignored both of them and made for the exit door. Rob followed him.

He returned to his hotel room, slamming the door shut as he walked inside. Rob paced around his feet, whining softly.

"Shut the fuck up, Rob."

Nick sat down on his bed and dropped his head into his hands. Sean's voice kept repeating in his head. _This is the stupidest decision you've ever made_. Nick dragged his fingers through his hair, massaging the back of his neck for a long minute.

All he could think was that Sean was right.

Rob jumped onto his bed and lay down next to him, shoving his head underneath one of Nick's arms. He scratched the dog's fur unconsciously, and gingerly laid himself down on the bed. His ribs throbbed. It had been a long day.

Nick stared at that bland white ceiling for a long time.

_I'm going to find them. Fuck Sean, fuck Eight Springs, fuck all that other shit. None of it matters. They're out there, and they are waiting for me._

_Maine. That's where they are. Maine. I'm going there._

The hotel room door creaked quietly open.

"...Nick?"

It was Isaac's soft voice, followed by the tapping of his crutches.

"Isaac, please. I don't want to talk right now." He struggled back to his feet and went to herd the boy back to the door so he could kick him out. Sean must have given the kid his key. Rob trotted behind him, wagging his tail. "Go on, kid. Leave me alone."

The boy put on the brakes. "No."

"Yes. Get out."

"No," Isaac repeated, staring up at him as he held his ground. He knew Nick would never lay a hand on him, and he was right. "I don't want you to leave," he stated.

Nick felt his heart drop. "It doesn't matter what you want or don't want, Isaac."

The kid went very still, hearing the tone of his words more than the words themselves. His voice became quiet and strained. "Nick... you're really leaving... aren't you?"

Nick pressed his lips together. "Yeah. I am."

The boy's eyes dropped to the ground. He wiped at them with the back of one hand, and took a deep breath. "But... I think my mom finally started to like you."

Nick let out a short breath. "What were you thinking, Isaac?" his voice was firm, but not menacing. "That I'd settle down with her and we could be a big happy family? You knew since we first met that I was heading somewhere else."

"I know..."

"Hey. Listen to me." He crouched down so that he was eye level with the boy. "Your mother... she's your family. She's _yours_. Well, they're _mine_. Do you understand that?"

"Yeah... yeah, but..."

"Come on, kiddo. You don't need this old man around to keep you going." He forced a small smile, trying to catch Isaac's eyes. "Chin up, okay? We tough guys don't need to cry."

"I don't... I don't want you to _go_."

"I know you don't."

"What if you get hurt? What if you get lost and we can't help you?"

"I was on my own a long time before D.C., Isaac. I can take care of myself."

Isaac swallowed and sobbed once, very quietly. His red-rimmed eyes were a strangely bright blue. "Nick, am I ever gonna... gonna see you, again?"

He let out a breath. "No, probably not."

At that, the boy really started wailing.

"It's all right," Nick said. "Come here."

Isaac's crutches clattered to the floor, and the boy dropped into his arms, crying into his shoulder. His tiny fingers gripped at the back of his neck. He held on tight, as if his hands alone could prevent him from going. "I don't want you to leave. Please don't leave, Nick." The little boy hugged him tighter. "I don't want you to leave," he repeated, his voice a soft whimper in his ear.

Nick blinked hard. Hell if he was going to cry in front of the kid. "I have to, Isaac."

"Why? Why do you have to?"

"Izzy... I made a promise, all right? I promised Rochelle I'd find her again. I can't go back on that."

"You said you weren't going to leave us. You _said_, Nick, you _said_!"

"I know that, Izzy, but... but you're with your mom now. You're probably the only kid in the world who can say they still have a mother. She'll take care of you. You don't need me around anymore, okay?"

The boy sobbed. "Yes, I _do_!"

"No. Izzy, no." Nick grabbed his shoulders gently and pushed him away, holding him at arm's length. He was crying so hard that he was hiccuping, random gasps and whines. "You're going to be fine. Isaac, you're gonna be just fine without me. You are the toughest little squirt I've ever met. You're gonna be a hell of a man when you grow up."

"I don't _understand_," the boy whispered, "why you can't _stay_."

"You will someday," Nick said, and forced a smile again. "Take good care of your mother for me. Can you do that?"

Isaac let out a long, shuddering breath, hiccuped, and nodded.

"Atta boy." He tousled the boy's hair gently. "I'm going to bed, okay? You wanna come with me down to the range tomorrow? Help me with my gun?"

"Yeah." Isaac nodded rapidly. "Yeah. I'll be there."

Nick straightened up. "Great. Goodnight, Izzy."

"'Night, Nick."

After the little boy left he curled up in his bed, Rob tucking himself close against his back. Nick kept staring out into nothing, trying not to think about _them_ and praying that he wasn't wrong.

* * *

_(A/N: Welcome to the new member of the 'One-Eyed Nick, Attorney at Law' team, Sanima, who has kindly accepted the offer to be my second beta. Sweeeeeet._

_So, a big thanks to my beta-readers, Kit (who is also my spider baby-sitter) and Sanima (who is also my L4D2 mentor). Realism expert update: we didn't play this time. We tried the new Mutation, 'Death's Door.' Talk about frightening. Strangely enough I was the one who usually ended up being the last one to die (I blame my Nick-like skills of self-preservation), and we got stuck on chapter three of The Parish. We only got to the graveyard once. (We were on Advanced, then eventually Normal, and still couldn't beat it.)_

_If anyone is interested in downloading and listening to a little fanmix for Two Step I put together (with the help of a few kindly readers), there's a link to it in my ff.n profile. Talk about nerdy._

_Coming up next: The Pariah, Part IV. Nick receives a few gifts.  
_

_(All the 'Pariah' titles are subject to change. God help me, I am lazy with chapter titles. But hey, it's what's inside that counts, right? ...Right?_

_Just as a warning, there's a bit of sexual content in the next chapter. Feel free to skip over it if you'd rather not read that sort of thing.) _


	28. The Pariah, Part IV

He was running.

He was running, he was chasing something— something he couldn't identify, but he was also chasing some people, three of them, their faces familiar even in the strange thick white fog that he couldn't get out of.

_Wait,_ he was calling out, but he couldn't hear his own voice. _Wait for me. I'm here. Don't go._

They drew away.

_Please, wait. Don't go._

He saw them smiling, turning away. They couldn't hear him, they couldn't see him. He was fumbling in the stillness, trying to catch up, but he was moving as if in slow-motion while they kept on, never once turning back to look at him.

_Please, I'm here. Don't leave me._

Then they were gone.

And then, a noise roared in his ears, and he was awake, but the noise was Rob barking— oh God, where were the zombies, where were the boys, where's Terry, Jesus where was his _gun_—

Nick was half out of the bed and pawing at the nightstand for something that wasn't there before he came back to himself and remembered he wasn't out on the road anymore, he was in a hotel room, he was safe. He realized he was panting, and as soon as he did the pain let itself be known, burning wildly across his chest. Hugging himself with one arm and rubbing his face with the other, he groaned.

The room was empty, save for himself and Rob. Sean was probably too pissed to continue to share a room with him— which suited Nick just fine, actually.

Rob barked again and he jumped, almost falling out of the bed.

"Fuck. Rob, what the fuck are you on about?"

A soft knock came to his ears.

Oh. The door. Someone was knocking on the door.

It had been so long since Nick had heard the noise and actually _answered_ a visitor to a door that it took him a few moments to remember what he was supposed to do. He found a wrinkled T-shirt and tugged it on over his head, then blundered about for his jeans.

Whoever it was knocked again, prompting Rob to bark some more.

"Shut up, Rob!" He glared at the door and called out. "Give me a second, Jesus."

There was a muffled, '_Sorry_,' and he pulled his jeans on over the briefs he'd worn to sleep, taking a moment to wonder at where the hell his belt might be before forgetting about it. Outside of the blankets, it was cold; he put his sweater on and decided to get some socks after he dealt with whoever was at the door.

Another knock sounded as he approached it.

"Holy shit, have some goddamn patience!"

The dog barked.

"Rob, I'm going to beat your ass," Nick grumbled, twisting the deadbolt and tugging the door open.

It was Byron. The black man grinned at him.

"The fuck do _you _want?" Nick asked groggily, and ran a hand through his hair, trying to tame it back into any position besides _all over the damn place. _

Byron jingled a set of keys from his hand. "Here's your car," he said, offering them out with a nonchalant smile.

"Uh, okay." Suspicion flared in his mind. "It's not rigged with explosives or anything, is it?"

"I don't think so," the man chuckled. "It's also from Elaine. She says it's to repay you for bringing her son to her."

Okay, now he was _really_ started to get paranoid— not that he wasn't paranoid enough already. "What kind of car is it?" he asked, uneasily, taking the keys from the man. They even came with one of those little remotes that made the car honk its horn or flash its lights.

"A Chevrolet. Some kind of station wagon or SUV or something." Byron kept smiling, pride in his voice. "Four-wheel drive, automatic, studded tires. It'll get you where you need to go."

Nick rolled the keys around in his hand. "Show me."

* * *

The little SUV was one of the newer models that had been manufactured just before the Infection. Nick walked a slow circle around it where it sat in a garage, glancing over the scrapes on the blue paint, the metal siding jury-rigged to the front bumper as a sort of cow-catcher, the heavy metal studs in the tires. It was large enough to fit him, Rob, and whatever supplies he'd need— not to mention tanks of gasoline, which he was going to have to take if he wanted to get anywhere close to Maine.

He opened the back hatch and folded down the backseat, eyeballing the amount of space that it created. Definitely enough for him to sleep in, if he tucked himself up into a ball, which he was likely to do anyway.

"Do you like it?" Byron asked. There was pride in his voice.

"Well, does it run?"

"Hell yeah, it does."

Nick came back around and climbed into the driver's seat, wrapping his hands carefully around the steering wheel. He brushed his fingers over the shifter in the center console and wiped a bit of dust off of the dashboard. There was a CD player in the dash, and a GPS navigator installed above that.

And cigarette butts in the ashtray. Gross.

He brought up his keys and stuck them into the ignition, turning them gently and feeling the engine rumble to life in front of him. He didn't know much about cars, admittedly, but he knew what they were supposed to sound like when they started, and this one sounded pretty good. The engine purred obediently as he gave an experimental press to the accelerator.

Nick turned on the windshield wipers, flicked the lights, made sure everything was working before he turned the keys and shut the car off. Byron gave him a thumbs up, a wave, and walked away.

For a while, Nick gazed outside the garage at the quiet snowfall, at the untouched road that curved out of Eight Springs and up. Then, out of his back pocket he pulled the map, as battered and faded from use as it was. He opened it and folded it until the space he needed to cross was all that was showing, then leaned forward and carefully wedged it against the glass that covered the speedometer and gas gauge.

Then he leaned back, eye flicking slowly from the map to the world past the windshield.

"I'm on my way, guys," he breathed. "Wait just a little while longer, okay?"

* * *

Sean still wouldn't speak to him. Apparently the teenager had gone down and requested a room all to himself; when Nick returned to his own later that night he found all the boy's stuff had been taken out. After that, the room was strangely silent, and cold.

He didn't see Sean at all for a long while, and the feeling of relief from not having to deal with him began to evolve into something more like regret— a sensation he fought stubbornly off. The teenager would only benefit from his absence, he told himself.

Nick had gained quite a reputation around Eight Springs. He was firmly known as 'the one-eyed asshole,' and was often sneered at whenever he passed someone in the halls of the hotel room or whenever he actually decided to show up for a meal. The problem with him was that he usually sneered right back, or growled an empty threat, or glared. He was pretty good at glaring. It was the eye.

Ellis' letter goaded him on. He'd been convalescing for almost two weeks, and while Dustin had told him it was going to take months for his ribs to completely heal, by the eighteenth day he was feeling almost back to normal. They only hurt when he touched them, or coughed, or— God forbid— sneezed. He'd never forget the first time he'd done _that_.

Nick had gone to the shooting range to mess with the Steyr some more, and had been trying to adjust the scope from further away— behind a counter— when he'd inadvertently kicked up some dust from somewhere, tickling his nose, and he couldn't help his body's natural reflex to sneeze.

The pain had literally floored him. He'd sat on his knees on the ground, holding himself and sobbing silently for a good ten minutes, glad that he'd been the only one in the range at the time, glad that nobody had wandered in and found him crying on the floor. The last thing he needed was more pity.

But he'd picked himself up and tried his best to brush it off; it was all he could really do anymore. He wasn't going to ever sneeze again, that was for sure. He'd even go so far to slap himself in the face if it meant preventing another one.

Another thing he noticed was that he was seeing a lot of Isaac's mother lately. Whenever he came around to eat, she would show up and sit with him. At first he believed Sean might be using her as a proxy to babysit him— make sure he was eating, that he wasn't getting sick again— but that theory had gone right out the window when she'd sat and ate her breakfast while he took only a single a bite of his own. He spent the rest of the time staring blankly out the window. She'd watched him the entire time, and said nothing of his lack of appetite.

Sometimes he would just catch a glance of her out of the corner of his eye, just subtle enough to slip past his paranoia. And sometimes he would be walking down the hall to his hotel room or be wandering down the outdoor path with Rob and he would see her, on a chair or a set of stairs. Ever since that first time he'd gone to the shooting range, he'd never caught her staring again. She was just _there_.

So he hunted down her son, who was paying a Game Boy in the lobby of the hotel at the time, and approached him about it.

"Your mother is stalking me."

Isaac blinked, slowly paused his game, and looked up. "What?"

Nick frowned. "Your mom. She's stalking me."

The little boy returned his eyes to the screen and sighed. "You're paranoid," he said, the word sounding awkward in his young voice.

They hadn't been speaking much to each other, either.

"Really. I keep seeing her all over the place. I think she's following me."

Isaac continued to press at the buttons on the game. "Still paranoid," he said.

Nick kept frowning, and walked away.

* * *

In the afternoon of the next day, Nick stood in the garage, staring at his car. He had spent most of his free time gathering up the last of the things he needed to take with him— talking the cook out of some more of her canned food and coercing Byron to hunt him down some more rounds for the Steyr. Everything he needed was packed inside; he'd even gotten Joseph to return his gun early. Rob sat at his feet, tail wagging, nudging his hand. The dog, at least, was ready to go.

Nick had spent a total of twenty-five days in the Eight Springs safe zone. He was leaving the next morning.

His ribs weren't healed yet; it was going to take a bit longer until they'd be whole again, but as it were they just felt sore, and he'd traveled with worse injuries. As long as he didn't put pressure on them, it was like they weren't really broken to begin with.

Byron had given him a revolver with an attached scope, for no real reason except to apparently make Nick more paranoid. He wasn't sure if the black man was trying to butter him up or if he really was just that kind of guy. Nick wasn't excited at the prospect of trying to reload a revolver in the heat of a fight.

Isaac had braided together a series of mismatched strings and ropes into a collar for Rob. It lay with strange, bright colors against the dog's brown fur. Nick hadn't thought of putting a collar on him before, since it wasn't like he was going to need to prove the dog had an owner any time soon, but he accepted the gift just the same.

The kid had also made a replacement strap for his gun— the original had been snapped by that Tank on the lake— which was also comprised of random, garish strings of different colors. Nick didn't mind too much. He could have just as easily gone and got something from the storage building, but Isaac had been so proud of it.

'_Look what my mom taught me to do! Now you can carry your rifle again._'

Nick stepped forward and opened the back hatch of the SUV, taking a final check on his supplies. The last thing he wanted was to be two days out and realize he'd forgotten something in the safe zone.

Rob jumped inside and began sniffing around. Nick ignored him and sifted through the food, glad that he wouldn't have to base most of his diet on MRE's. If he ate meagerly, there would be plenty for him to get to Maine.

There was about seven hundred miles to go.

It was a long way off.

Nick tried not to think about how suicidal this journey was going to be. He tried his best to be optimistic— after all, he could cover a lot of ground with a car, and he had plenty of supplies.

Not like any of that was going to matter if he ran into another Tank or crashed the car into a pole.

He was going to keep the revolver right in that cubbyhole below the CD player, so if he got cornered by a Tank, he wouldn't have to suffer through getting his spine snapped or laying brain-dead in the snow until the rest of his body shut down. He wasn't going to follow Terrence's fate.

A voice spoke from behind him.

"Nice car."

Startled, he jumped up, hitting his head.

He heard Sean's slight scoff as the kid covered up a laugh.

"What do you want?" Nick grumbled, rubbing the top of his head. He turned until he was sitting in the back of the car, legs dangling off the bumper.

Sean was bundled up against the cold, holding a cardboard shoebox in his arms. In the time that Nick hadn't seen him, his arm had been removed from the splint. His voice was low, controlled. "This is for you." He held out the box.

Nick took it, tilting his head. "What's in it?"

"Medical supplies. I know Dustin wouldn't give you much."

He opened the shoebox and looked inside, poking around to see all there was before shutting it and placing it in the back with his other things. "Thanks, Sean."

The kid wouldn't meet his eyes. "I told Izzy I would." He turned to leave. "Bye, Nick."

"Hey— wait." He hopped down from the back of the car and came after the teenager. "Sean. Listen. I'm..." he scratched at the back of his neck, not certain what he was attempting to say, "...I —"

Sean stopped and stared at him. "Well, spit it out."

"Uh... thanks. For helping me. Get better, I mean."

"I'm a doctor. It's my job." Sean was very quiet, for a minute. When he spoke, it was still that carefully neutral tone. "I guess I never did thank _you_, did I? For getting us out of D.C." He took a step forward. "I just wanted to say that before you left. Thanks."

"You saved my life, I saved yours. It was an even trade."

The kid's eyes met his, filled with some strange emotion he couldn't place.

"And where did that put Terrence?"

Nick recoiled as if he'd been slapped.

Sean blinked rapidly. "Oh, God— I didn't mean it that way. Nick, I didn't —"

He felt ashamed and furious, torn between wanting to punch Sean in the face and curl up alone somewhere and cry. Neither of those things would help him. So he settled with turning away from the kid and toward his car. He shut the hatch and moved to leave the garage. "Bye, Sean."

Nick never got a reply from him. The last he ever heard of Sean's voice was a short, low sob, which might have only been the wind whipping around above Eight Springs.

* * *

Nick went back toward his hotel room, eager to enjoy the last night where he'd have a bed to sleep in. The hotel lobby was empty— or, it had seemed so upon first glance, but he was nearly to the main hall when he saw her.

Lo and behold. Isaac's mother.

She'd been sitting on the couch in the lobby, in front of the television, which was off.

Nick bristled at the sight and hurried toward his room.

Her voice stopped him.

"Nicholas," she said. The way his name rolled off her tongue was a far cry different from Coach's. It sounded much less severe. "Hold on a minute."

He slowed to a halt and looked at her. She wasn't wearing a jacket— but a rather nice blouse and some clean but battered skinny jeans. Nick gave her a quick once-over of a look, more out of natural male reflex than anything. He had to admit that she was in good shape for a mother, even as she walked toward him, swaggering her hips slightly.

It triggered some kind of warning flag in his head, but he couldn't figure out what it was trying to tell him.

"Hello," she said.

"Hi."

A small smile settled onto her face. "Nicholas, may I... speak to you for a moment?"

He nodded, turning toward her. "Sure, I guess."

With slow steps, she approached him. "I want to thank you, Nicholas. For bringing my son to me."

Nick took a step back, keeping the space between them. "Don't worry about it. Thanks for the car." She was still pressing forward, and he was still retreating.

Second warning flag.

Again, incomprehensible.

"Those three months I was here, at Eight Springs— all that time, I thought my son was dead. I was so sure that... that I'd lost him, in D.C. I was so sure he was gone." Her voice was soft and earnest. "...And then, Nicholas, you came."

Nick backed up till he hit the resistance of a wall, and Elaine drifted past the last bit of empty space, placing one palm on either side of him against the cheap wallpaper. His heart was in his throat as he flinched slightly back. What the hell was she doing?

"What you've done for us... it can never really be repaid, but..." —she was coming closer, so close he could smell the fragrance of the cheap shampoo she'd used in her hair— "...I can still do something for you in return before you go, Nicholas."

And she kissed him.

There was a jolting forcefulness to it, something that made all the muscles in his body seize up. An electric thrill ran down his spine and settled between his thighs and navel; a sensation he hadn't felt in a long, _long_ time. Elaine brought one hand up and ran her slender, calloused fingers down his jawline, over his Adam's apple to settle on his chest.

Before he could realize what he was doing, Nick was kissing her _back_, desperation building hot and wild in his mind— a bonfire, an _inferno_—

And all at once, Elaine pulled away. He was left struggling for air, fighting to form a cohesive thought inside his suddenly muddled head. Was she really inviting him to—

"Well?" she asked, running her fingers through the longer hair at the base of his neck. "Will you accept my favor in return for yours, Nicholas?" Her familiar eyes were pale and bright in the dim of the lobby.

"Yes," Nick whispered, hearing the plea in his own voice. He ran his hands over her hips and around to her lower back and tugged her to him, claiming her lips again. She made a soft, surprised noise in the back of her throat, and let out a little satisfied sigh. The deep _want_ in him had been brought to life and could not be fought back. He wasn't even going to try.

Elaine deepened the kiss, then bit down on his lower lip as one of her hands ghosted down below his navel.

Holy _shit_. This was really happening. It wasn't a dream or hallucination; oh God, Elaine was already sticking her hands down his pants— shit, her fingers were _cold_— and Nick couldn't hold back the thready moan that came from his throat.

"Mmm," Elaine hummed. "My room is just a few doors down, you know."

Nick wanted her _now_, right _here_ in the hallway, he didn't care who saw, it didn't matter—

But she was already pulling him down the hall, her small hand in his. The door to her room seemed miles away, but he somehow made it, and as soon as it was open and shut, and they were inside, she shoved him down on her bed and started kissing him again.

"Where's Iz —"

"Shh. He's staying with Sean tonight." Elaine ran a small hand down his stomach. "It's all right, Nicholas. I'm going to take care of you." She kissed him again.

The next few minutes were filled with frantic touches, clothes getting pulled off and forgotten on the bed or the floor, soft breaths and softer words. When she straddled him in the weak lamplight, movements gentle and careful as to not hurt him, and slowly pushed him into her, everything else seemed to fall away. No pain, no hunger, no exhaustion. Nothing else mattered but what he was feeling right now, the not-heat, the not-cold, the friction, the _everything._

The only word he could say properly was her name, and the only thing he could do was spasmodically grip the bedspread and moan as she moved slowly above him. He lost track of himself, of things that used to be easy to do. He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe; every part of his mind was just a bleary wild haze that wiped out every thought he had and replaced it with a stream of words that didn't make sense even to him.

Elaine cried out softly above him; he was aware of that at least, and was able to trace a trembling hand over one of her hips and across her stomach. She came down and kissed him again, fervent, wild, she tasted salty-sweet and her eyes were so _blue_. The only noise he could hear was their breathing and the near-silent _slick-slick_ of their bodies colliding. It goaded him to that final edge before finally shoving him off it, and he was powerless to stop his own fall.

Nick distantly recalled whimpering something into her ear before it was over, but he would never be able to remember what it was. The desperation, the heat inside him spilled over and overtook everything else. For a few blessed, incredible moments, everything was white-hot and pure and perfect, nothing but them and the sensations they'd created together.

A few long minutes passed of him simply relaxing into her and panting, catching his breath as he came back to the reality that he existed in. The pounding electric heat slowly ebbed away into that warm, embracing fuzziness that grabbed him and dragged him down to the soft comforter on her bed. They lay tangled on the blankets, his mind humming with a tremulous fire that he hadn't felt for a long while and would probably never feel again. He shut his eyes and savored it, tried to memorize it, tried to breathe it in and drown in it.

Elaine relaxed next to him.

"Jesus," he breathed, trying wrestle his tongue and voice to work for him, "E— Elaine, I..."

The bed shook with her quiet, pleased chuckle. She tucked herself up to his side— on his right side, the side he could see from. He had no doubt she did so intentionally.

Nick gave up trying to speak like a normal person. His tongue wasn't working at all.

Elaine smiled at his little sigh of satisfaction and pulled herself closer, raising herself up on one arm to gaze down at him. There was warm adoration in her eyes that he'd never been regarded with before, not before the apocalypse and definitely not after. She ran a hand idly down his chest, tracing the fresh scars of the Hunter attacks, keeping her touch away from the side he'd injured.

Nick forced himself to relax under her fingers and gazed drowsily around the room.

"Mmm," Elaine hummed under her breath. She was still studying him, eyes wandering over every inch of his body. He wondered at the emotion in her eyes, why she would cast such a look on _him_— rangy and rough, an eyesore. Her eyes moved from his torso up to his face. Elaine reached down with one hand and began to trace a finger along one of the devastating scars there.

Nick flinched, reaching up to grab her hand with his. "Don't."

"I think I like them," Elaine said, pulling her hand from his grip. "They're beautiful."

"They're _ugly_."

She smiled and shook her head. "I don't think so, not at all." Elaine began to trace one of them again with a feather-light touch, and again he pushed her hand away. She placed her hand down on his chest again with a small breath. "Do they hurt you, Nicholas?"

"No."

"Then why do you hate them?" she breathed, lowering herself down next to him to get comfortable. "They are something to be proud of, I think. They show how strong you really are."

"I miss having depth perception," he murmured, voice distant, and she chuckled again.

"You seem to do just fine without it."

Nick scoffed weakly as she tucked his head under hers. He shifted a little, torn between feeling lost and awkward in her embrace and wanting more than anything to let her warmth consume him. At any other time the closeness would put him on edge. Nick shut his eyes and let out a short sigh, a noise that he recognized as one of contentment.

For the first time in a long time, as he slipped into slumber he was warm and relaxed, and he did not dream of frozen lakes, or sinking ships, or dark subway tunnels devoid of light.

* * *

In the morning, he woke before her.

Carefully, he untangled himself from her arms, and climbed out of the bed. He cast about and found his clothes, pulling them on, stepping about cautiously in the dim space. She continued to sleep, taking slow, even breaths, curled up in the covers.

Nick pushed a hand through his hair as he looked at her, and sighed.

On the stand next to the door, he found a notepad and a pencil. He scribbled a tiny note in the neatest cursive he could muster.

_'Take good care of Isaac._

_Nick.'_

He slipped out of the door and padded quietly down the hall. He stopped at his own room, gathering the last of his things, and made for the garage. Rob was waiting in the lobby— had he really forgotten the dog here last night?— and he patted him on the head. They crossed outside together.

It was very early— six o'clock or so. The sun was still getting itself ready; he could just barely see the brush of dark silver on the distant horizon.

Nick never said goodbye to anyone, save for Sean the night before. It was better this way. He couldn't hesitate. If he did, he might end up staying, and he didn't want that. He didn't belong here.

Then again, he didn't belong anywhere— he never had. And he never would.

His car was waiting for him. Nick opened the passenger side, letting Rob jump in, then slid into the driver's seat and stuck the keys into the ignition. The Chevy came to life instantly. He let it idle for a few minutes, letting the defroster clear the back window of ice. The map sat against the speedometer. Ellis' note was tucked inside.

Nick shifted the car into drive and pulled carefully out of the garage, onto the well-used path to the parking lot. Someone was walking from the infirmary to the hotel— Dustin. Probably on the way to see Elaine.

It was nice to know that he hadn't gotten pulled into some stupid love triangle.

He pulled up to the exit gate. Joseph was there.

"You leavin', then, Nicholas?"

"Yes. When do you _sleep_?"

"Not often, I'm afraid," the old man laughed. "Good luck, son."

The gate was unlocked and opened for him.

Nick sat in the car for a few moments, staring out at the road, unmoving, like a suicide jumper at the edge of a cliff.

Then, he released his foot off the brake and started off. Eight Springs drew away behind him.

From the window of one of the hotel's rooms, a teenager sat and watched as the bright red taillights bounced away down the road, dipped down over a hill, and disappeared.

* * *

_(A/N: __I hope I did not offend anyone with the content of this chapter. Sometimes, a guy just needs some lovin'. And poor Nick has been getting nothing but Tank fists and Hunter claws for a very long time. [No, I do not 'ship' NickxElaine, that is not what I'm trying to do here. It was purely about sex, not a relationship. Besides, I ship NickxSteyr more than anything, lol]  
_

_So that is the end of the D.C. arc. From here we are slipping into the third, and final, arc of the story. Probably about 6-7 chapters left in total._

_Thanks to my beta-readers; Kit, my super-Mom [about to introduce a new member into her family!] and Sanima, my super-Coach. [p.s. I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm lonely, I have a chest infection etc.]_

_There might be a slight delay for the next chapter [about a week or so], since I'm going to be digging into the final arc now, and I want to make sure everything lines up correctly before I start posting it. Sorry about that, but I'd rather take my time and avoid continuity mistakes [or posting something crappy] than rush my chapters out and end up missing all the stuff my betas told me to fix [ALREADY DONE THAT LOL]._

_I've got some pretty sweet fanart on my DA for Two Step. Also a bit of my own artwork [which sucks] but if you're interested there's a link on my profile page._

_Coming up next: The Soldier. Nick, Rob, and their Chevy.)  
_


	29. The Soldier

Nick drove.

He took the high mountain roads out of Eight Springs, taking cautious turns through the winding pathways choked with abandoned vehicles. There were tire tracks out here already, and he followed them until that afternoon when they began to turn westward and head into a distant city. Its image sat immobile on the horizon, like a cardboard cutout covered in ash. Nick stared at it for a while, chewing on canned beans and listening to Rob's teeth crunching on dog kibble in the seat next to him.

He drove.

By the second day, Eight Springs was pretty far off. When he stopped for lunch, he turned on the radio and tried to pick up Elaine's signal, but couldn't. All he heard was blaring static and the President's voice every once in a while, wavering in and out of focus. Nick shuffled through both the AM and FM frequencies and found nothing, save for the D.C. signal. Just static.

As he was fiddling with the dials for the radio, he heard the click of the CD player coming to life.

It started up mid-song, and the speakers he'd jacked up to try and pick out something from the veil of static blared out the pounding of snare drums and the rhythm of a strumming guitar:

'_Hey, you, get off of my cloud! Hey, you, get off of my_—_'_

Nick fumbled for the volume dial, twisting it down to silence. He'd nearly jumped to the other side of the car in surprise, and his meal of crackers almost ended up on the floor. With a swallow, he looked out the windshield, hoping that nothing big and angry had heard the sudden noise.

He played it safe. Nick set his food aside and put the SUV into drive, slipping down a side road and parking underneath some trees before shutting off the lights. From here, the car looked just like all the others: forgotten and empty. The road ahead of him showed nothing, and he couldn't hear anything but the soft whistling of wind outside.

"Shit, that was loud, huh?" he asked of the dog, who was gazing at the food he'd brought back into his hands. "Oh, knock it off, Rob, you just ate."

Nick nibbled on the corner of one cracker and gently turned the volume back up on the CD player.

'_I can't get no, I can't get no, when I'm watchin' my T.V., and a man comes on to tell me...'_

Despite everything, Nick felt a smile coming onto his face. "Shit. It's been a long time since I've heard The Stones," he muttered. He kept the volume down low, but the lyrics and the wailing of the electric guitar were still audible.

'_But he can't be a man because he doesn't smoke..._'

Nick tapped one fingernail on the steering wheel, surprised at his ability to recall the lyrics. He hadn't heard a song— a _good_ song— for a very long time. Bearded men screaming incomprehensibly into a microphone didn't count, even if _that _band's pyrotechnics had been the thing that pulled him and Coach and the others out of the amusement park.

When he was finished with the crackers, he began off again, taking a right onto the wide, open highway. The LED display near the rear-view read northeast, which was good enough for him.

Mick Jagger's voice sang quietly about mothers on antidepressants and how sometimes, you got what you needed.

Nick drove.

* * *

It was no surprise to him that by the fifth day he was beginning to run low on gasoline. He'd jammed three ten-gallon containers into the back that were completely full when he'd left. Now only one of them held anything inside, swirling sadly around the bottom quarter of the tank.

Nick had brought a length of garden hose with him, just like when he and the boys had been traveling out of D.C. It took him longer on his own, wandering from car to car, trying to ignore the chill of the wind and the awful silence of the area around him. Rob stuck with him, sometimes rolling in the snow nearby while Nick listened to the precious fuel dripping out of the hose and into the tank. The dog didn't seem to mind the snow — in fact, he looked like he was having a hell of a time, kicking it up everywhere and flopping around like an idiot.

"Are you retarded?" Nick asked suddenly while he was on the sixth car, spitting the gasoline from his mouth.

Rob lifted his head from the snow nearby and looked at him, then jumped up and dashed away, as if he'd seen something, or expected Nick to give chase. He still favored one of his back legs, but he seemed just as nimble and athletic as when Nick had first stumbled upon him.

"I'm serious. I think you got dropped on your head when you were a puppy."

The dog made a playful _whuff_ and trotted up close, dancing around just outside of Nick's range.

"What? I'm not chasing you. I'm busy."

He looked back to his tank and hose, listening to the trickling flow of gas.

Rob huffed again and ran off, out of sight around a nearby truck that had crashed into a tree. He came back with a large stick in his mouth, and dropped it next to him.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

Rob nudged the stick with his nose, then backed up a few steps.

"You want me to throw it?"

The dog wagged his tail.

Nick scoffed and turned back to the hose and tank. "Fine. Give me a second."

He sank back on his haunches until the flow petered off, then he tugged the hose out of the car and wrapped it around the handle of the gasoline container. Sighing, he stood, turning toward his dog.

Rob dropped down immediately on his front legs, tail in the air.

"Jesus. This is stupid," Nick grunted, bending down and taking the stick off the ground. He waved it up and down in his hand. Rob didn't take his eyes off it. "Wow, you're desperate." Nick flipped the stick in his hand, like a baton, then drew back and threw it down the road, gasping softly at the flare of pain in his side. The dog took off after it, galloping down the road.

Nick watched as he came back with it, tail wagging.

"Good dog," he said.

Rob's tail went faster and he dropped the stick at his feet.

Nick threw the stick a little more gently from then on, giving it a more horizontal toss rather than an overhead one. How hilarious would it have been if he'd have to return to Eight Springs after five days because he'd undone all of the healing his ribs had gone through. It wouldn't be fun to explain to Sean.

"I bet you want this stick," he teased as he held it up in the air again. "Want the stick, Rob?"

He flinched as the dog let out a loud bark. It echoed across the fields and Nick turned as if he would be able to see the sound waves rolling through the air, dropping the stick to the ground. When the silence settled in again, and he didn't see anything moving nearby or hear anything distinctly zombie-like, he relaxed and looked back down to his dog.

He remembered that those Hunters in the movie theater had never made a sound until they'd attacked, and felt a little bit colder. Had the other zombies adopted the same tactic?

Nick could still hear the bellow of the Tank on the lake in his head. Obviously a zombie that big wouldn't give a shit. Tanks didn't need to sneak up on you. Especially one that fast and that powerful. Something that could flip a freight train and rip it apart right in front of you wasn't exactly something that could be outmaneuvered.

Outsmarted, though — that was still a possibility.

The voice in his memory spoke in that raspy wheeze:

_Nick, I'm scared._

He shook his head, and sighed.

Terrence would have had a blast in Eight Springs, he thought.

And it was likely he would've taken the kid with him when he left.

Nick stared out at the road ahead for a minute, then went back to collecting gasoline.

* * *

The days passed, and the landscape didn't change. Above, the clouds were the same dark gray, and the snow around them seemed to take on the same shade, making it look more akin to ash. He saw nothing living — no zombies, no animals. The dark blue of his SUV seemed the only splash of color in the world, the only thing that was moving. Even that seemed dampened, muted, as if he'd suddenly been struck colorblind.

Almost every morning he would wake up and the windows of the car would be snowed over, and he'd have to crawl out into the weather to brush it all off again. It was even worse outside, where the wind had begun to pick up and create big drifts over everything, like flash-frozen ocean waves.

As the sun would begin to fall and the world around them darkened, Nick would immediately seek out the nearest place to park the car — a gas station or a garage, sometimes just a tree. He wasn't going to risk traveling at night, not with his vision, even if the nights were so much longer than the days. There was a lot of down time, and while he had a battery-powered lamp, he tried to use it as little as possible, keeping himself and the dog in the icy stifling dark as much as he could.

Most nights were so cold that he could barely sleep for the trembling in his limbs; he'd burrow himself under every blanket he had and still be freezing, clinging to his own arms and tucking his legs as close to his body as possible. Rob would snake himself in under the covers and worm himself into Nick's arms or against his chest or back, and there they would lay until morning. It took Nick a long time to drift off, anymore.

There were a lot of dreams.

Sometimes it was Coach's soft smile and other times it was his horrified grimace, the last thing Nick had ever seen with whole vision. Sometimes it was Rochelle's gentle voice, her hands, the delicate rings of gold around her wrists or hanging off her ears, but other times it was her looking down on him and sobbing that high awful terrible noise, holding his own jacket against his face as he lay bleeding to death on the floor of a helicopter. And sometimes it was Ellis, the kid's drawling voice telling a story or just _rambling_, it really wouldn't matter, he just wanted to hear it — and then at other times his voice was low and dark and truthful:

_I don't think you're going to..._

The kid would shut his eyes, turn his head slightly away —

_Ro', there's so much blood..._

His head would give a little shake, and a forced smile would come across it as he turned back to face him —

_You're gonna be fine, brother. I've got you._

And sometimes, he dreamt of the cruise ship. Of water.

He dreamt that he'd never gotten off, and drowned down there, scrabbling at a door that _had_ opened when he'd gone through in real life but this time it _didn't_, and there was no _real life_, this dream was his reality and there were no second chances, and the water tasted like salt on his tongue and the reflexive gasp of his lungs dragged it in —

And he'd wake up, disoriented, terrified. His heart a snare drum in his throat, he'd drag in a shuddering breath, and then struggle to comprehend that it hadn't filled his chest with icy seawater.

Then Nick would realize he'd been dreaming, _again_, and slowly sink back down to the floor. Rob would tuck closer to his body, with a small, gruff noise. He'd bury his fingers in the dog's fur and stare at nothing, until finally sleep reclaimed him and, inexorably, the cycle would start over.

Nick had been traveling for a week. He was somewhere in the northeast section of Pennsylvania, where he'd been making his way slowly up Interstate 220. It wasn't much more than a tiny red line on his map, but he traced it with a pencil from place-to-place, even scribbling in the names of towns that weren't listed.

At least twice a day he would trace a finger over those lines, proposing his upcoming path. 220 seemed like a clear, open stretch of road at the moment, but he knew that could change in a few miles and he could be face-deep in zombies. He wanted to try and follow it for a while longer at least, perhaps even to New York, at which time he'd probably have to start making more right turns to get himself a little further eastward.

He tried his best to stay optimistic. After all, he'd already covered at least ten times the amount of ground he would have taken on foot. He'd be in New York soon. The fact that he'd made it that far in so short a time was a strange feeling, and then he'd remember that he used to be able to take a plane from one end of the country to the other and arrive in eight hours.

The sky had been empty since the cruise ship had gone under.

* * *

On the morning of the tenth day, just outside the state line of New York, he woke up to Rob growling.

He jolted upright, looking around wildly, but all he could see out the windows was gray. Rob was standing near the driver's seat, staring at the windshield, a low snarl building up in his chest. It seemed dark in the SUV — how long had he been asleep? — and Nick fumbled for the electric lamp. He stopped as his brain finally figured out why it was so dark.

The windows were snowed over again. Inside the car, the air seemed heavier, as if the snow was pushing at the vehicle from all sides, trying to trap him in there.

Nick pushed the blankets off himself and moved over to where Rob was, setting a hand on the dog's ruff. Rob didn't move, or look at him — his eyes were fixated on the windshield, hackles raised up, standing stiff and intimidating in the small space.

"What is it? Rob, what —"

His voice dropped away as a sound came from outside. Some kind of thump, like a body falling from high up. He jolted, and reached for the dog. He could hear something moving around out there.

"Shh, Rob."

Nick let out a breath and leaned toward the front of the car, reaching down and taking the revolver out of the cubbyhole beneath the CD player. His hands were shaking as he ejected the cylinder, assuring the firearm was loaded. The tiny click that the gun made when he pushed it back into place sounded like a shout.

He set the gun in his lap and moved closer to Rob, reaching out to grab the dog's face. He wrapped both hands carefully around his muzzle and held him still.

"Shh," he whispered, turning back toward the windows, wishing that the snow would fall away, and also hoping that it froze to the glass and never melted.

There came a soft sound like a wood pole being dragged over stone, rhythmic and scratchy.

_Tap-shkk._

_Tap-shkkk._

Nick tracked it as best he could without being able to see it, swearing that he could feel his bones creaking in his neck from moving so slowly. He kept his grip firm around Rob's mouth, the dog's huff blowing hot air into his face.

He didn't dare open his mouth to hush the dog further.

A shadow fell across the snow at the back window. Nick shrank back, although he was already near the front of the SUV; Rob started growling again, a deep noise that reverberated in Nick's chest like a double bass playing in its lowest notes. He tightened his grip over the dog's mouth, and Rob tossed his head, ripping himself away from Nick's hands.

The dog swung toward the back window, seeing the shadow out there. Nick scrambled after him, grabbing at his collar, trying to get him to stay quiet.

He hissed, "Shh —"

There was a low murmuring noise on the other side of the glass, unintelligible, but Nick could hear the curiosity in its tone. He yanked at Rob's collar, but trying to move the dog from his appointed position was impossible.

The gray layer of snow over the back window lightened a bit, then darkened, then lightened again. Something dragged itself through the snow, a finger or a hand, brushing away a thin line from the glass.

_Oh, fuck this_, Nick thought, feeling his heart trying to climb up to the back of his tongue.

He scrabbled for the driver's seat, fumbling with the keys. When the SUV's engine snarled awake in front of him, there was an answering roar from the rear of the car. Nick turned on the windshield wipers and put the vehicle into drive, slamming his foot down on the accelerator.

The tires shrieked as they tried to make purchase in the soft, fresh snow, catching momentarily before spinning again, catching again, spinning.

"Come on, just _fucking go_!" Nick cried, hearing that awful booming noise from behind him again.

The SUV jolted forward and started through the snow, windshield wipers struggling to remove the heavy build-up. He couldn't see anything; Nick was terrified of hitting a pole, yes, but his fear of whatever was trying to get at him from outside was a lot worse at the moment.

Rob was barking in the back, a sound he knew meant danger. The tires caught and spun again.

"Oh, no, no, no, come on!"

He heard a noise like a freight train in his head, earsplitting, and couldn't shield his ears for the frantic beating of his heart, the desperate pressure of his foot on the accelerator. The tires were humming, making the whole car vibrate — or it was whatever was outside, its noise becoming impossibly louder, and Nick was sure his eardrums were going to rupture —

The vehicle leapt forward again, and this time it didn't immediately get stuck in the snow. He pleaded for it to keep moving, unsure if he was saying the words aloud or not because he couldn't hear anything but low-frequency ringing in his ears. Part of the snow on the windshield finally fell away; he could see the world outside again, overcast and empty.

He'd gotten halfway off the road in his terror, and swung the steering wheel back to the left, feeling a bump as he came over a curb or dead body. Nick didn't even want to look behind him, but on reflex his eye drew to the rear-view mirror, glancing to the back of the SUV, where Rob was still moving as if he were barking, but he couldn't hear him at all. The snow had fallen away from the back window and there was something black-brown and huge out there on the road, behind him, and for a second he thought it was a goddamn bear, but it wasn't — it was a zombie.

As he watched, it picked up speed and flew toward him, toward the SUV, and he felt like his whole brain was vibrating but he realized that it was just making that horrible noise again, but he could only feel it, not hear it. Desperate, Nick yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, trying to avoid a collision.

For a split-second, he was sure that it was going to hit the car and tear it apart; he grabbed at the revolver but it wasn't in his lap anymore. A curse left his mouth as air because there was no noise to give it meaning.

The car shuddered underneath him as the zombie brushed against the rear-left bumper, and kept going, straight past the snow-covered windows and ahead of him.

Nick saw it — the hulking form, huge like a Tank, but it wasn't a Tank at all. One massive arm dragged through the snowfall on the road, and the other was nonexistent. Its legs were huge, muscular, bare. There wasn't a scrap of cloth on it at all. It turned, pivoting on one leg, centering its gaze on him. Its jaw was hanging off its face.

Nick had never been so scared to see a Charger. The SUV rolled forward, obnoxiously slow compared to the zombie's rush.

The Charger lunged at him and the car and he screamed, his whole world in complete silence as it lifted that huge arm and brought it down on top of the vehicle.

Nick could actually see the dent it had created, buckling the roof down toward him. The whole car jerked as if it were a toy in a child's hands. He gripped harder to the wheel, trying to turn away from the Charger, stomping his foot down onto the accelerator. For a second, he could see the zombie outside, mere feet away on the other side of the windshield. There was a gaping hole where its throat used to be with the dislocated jaw hanging down next to it.

The SUV jumped forward, and the Charger drew away behind him as he managed to keep his purchase with the road. Nick tried to keep his eye on the road ahead of him and an eye on the zombie behind him. It wasn't easy.

He must have been on the outskirts of a town or something similar; houses and buildings began to flash past the windows. The SUV kept going straight, as straight as it could be with all the cars on the road and the snowfall built up everywhere. He was too scared of trying to turn and ending up flipping the entire vehicle over. At this speed, on snow, he wouldn't be able to prevent it.

Nick thought some of his hearing might be coming back; there was a rhythmic sound behind him that might have been Rob barking. His ears were mostly just hissing, like the static on the radio. The car shuddered underneath him and he couldn't tell if he was driving over something or if the Charger was coming at him; he couldn't look at the mirror for fear it'd be feet away.

Keeping a straight path on the road brought him struggling up a hill, where at the top the SUV fishtailed crazily, and he was sure it would get stuck or flip or stop completely and that'd be it. The tires gripped to the snow though — it didn't seem so deep around here — and brought him down a wide lane filled with cars, and shops springing up on either side.

Noise built back up in his limited hearing and Nick turned the wheel again, brushing against a white sedan on the road. The steering wheel shook in his hands as he tore away from it, and in his peripheral vision, on his right, he saw movement.

It was the Charger, but it had missed him again. At a speed Nick would never be able to obtain with his car, it rammed into a parked truck. Shoving his foot onto the pedal, he expected entirely for the truck to shift a bit in the snow but ultimately stick, and for the Charger to bounce off of that and come straight at him.

Instead, when the zombie hit the truck, both kept going, the vehicle bending inward as if it had wrapped itself round a phone pole, and the Charger continued to drag it straight into and through the glass windows and doors of an Italian restaurant. The impact shook everything; part of the building's roof and eaves collapsed inward, throwing dust and snow into the air.

Nick tore his gaze away and drove, begging aloud that it had died in there, oh God please don't let it come back out, just die in there, just die, just die. He could only hear the lowest tones of his own voice, as if he were listening in on the other side of a thick door.

The hill drew gently upward, and terror filled him when the earth began to fall away on his right side, revealing a stretch of huge office buildings that drew further and further below him. He fought the urge to hit the pedal as hard as he could, just to try to go faster, to get away from that decline.

In the rear-view, the Charger re-appeared, looking more or less completely unscathed.

He was so terrified that he felt like he was being strangled when he looked ahead again and saw the clumped, abandoned cars on the left side of the road, just shadows of what they were beneath the blanket of snow. The SUV was feet from the downward slope of the hill.

Nick knew the Charger was coming. He could do nothing to stop what was about to happen.

It hit him.

The Charger got a good part of his rear bumper, just like before, hitting the left side, shoving the car into a turn toward the hill.

Precise.

Planned.

Nick's view of the road swung harshly to the right, and the car was shivering like a jackhammer underneath him. He swung the wheel hard in the opposite direction, trying to brake, trying to get the car to stop.

He couldn't do it. The front of the vehicle dipped down and the whole thing headed to the bottom, snow and weeds flying up into the windshield. Nick was pointlessly kicking the brake, but it wasn't going to work. He was heading for a building, a big one, glass windows all along the bottom, some of them boarded, most of them broken.

The hill leveled out into the parking lot and the SUV skidded sideways as Nick tried to stop it, back end swinging out the other way as the front-wheel drive tried its best to slow his path through the snow. He just kept going, straight at the building. His hands suddenly wished for the revolver. All he had in them was the steering wheel.

He yanked it again, hard, feeling the sensation in his chest of his own voice, pleading and begging for something, and yet nothing, to happen. The car straightened out and went nose-first into the building's barricaded glass windows.

Nick was sure he was dead right there, but there wasn't any sudden darkness, or lack of sensation, or anything. The car still trembled underneath him. Splinters, snow, and glass sprayed off the hood and in all directions. A cheap office partition exploded in front of him and he was in a hallway, a big wide one, drinking fountains on one side, CEDA posters on the other.

When he braked, he did hear something — the high pitched squealing of his own car's tires on linoleum. He begged for carpet, and received none. He blasted through a set of swinging double doors, into another hall, clinging to the steering wheel as if it would shield him from everything, seeing a wall coming at him now, filled with framed photos of smiling employees.

Nick kept his foot on the brake but he couldn't watch anymore; the wall rushed to meet him and he raised his hands to protect his face from whatever was going to be coming at it soon. For a sudden, sharp second he feared for his dog, thought the impact would throw Rob right out the windshield.

The impact never came.

He heard the squealing of the tires for another long few seconds, and then it quieted.

Under his quaking body, the vehicle was still.

Slowly, he drew his arms away from his face, and saw the photo of an aged woman grinning back at him.

The SUV idled a foot or so from the wall, its hood remarkably intact, save for a sprinkling of glass and snow amongst the dips and valleys of the dents he'd incurred.

Nick dropped his hands to his sides and might have sobbed, or it was just a really deep breath. He fumbled for the stick, shifted into park. Rob's cold nose touched his cheek.

Then, the low, distant roaring again, just on the edge of what he was able to hear.

His heart dropped and turned cold in his chest. In the rear view, he saw a flash of movement somewhere down the path he'd plowed through the building.

Nick looked at his dog. Dug his hand into the rough fur, pinched the collar between his thumb and forefinger for a half-second. He dropped his arm and picked up the Steyr.

"I'll be back, Rob," he said, or thought he was saying, and grabbed the handle of the driver's side door. He had to shove his shoulder hard against it to get it open because of the dent the Charger had made. His boots hit the wet linoleum, and he moved away from the SUV, slamming the door shut behind him.

"Stay, Rob," he breathed, and clicked the safety off his rifle.

Nick turned, and saw the shadow at the other side of the hall, and lifted the scope to his eye.

* * *

_(A/N: A million apologies for the delay. I hope to be on time from now on. The key word here being _hope_.  
_

_Thanks for the skills of my beta-readers, Kit and Sanima._

_The songs are, obviously, by The Rolling Stones, the first of which being 'Get Off My Cloud,' followed by '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.'  
_

_Coming up next: The Veteran.)  
_


	30. The Veteran

Nick did not like silence.

His life, like most peoples' lives, was loud. Before the Infection, it had been the hissing of cars on freeways or the roar of a crowd in a casino, or the noise of his wife's wailing in his ears or the constant murmur of a television set. Those noises had been replaced by that of discharging firearms, of screaming zombies, explosions and fires and shrieking rain.

But silence was something he would never be able to get used to.

At this moment, all he could hear was a low ring, something he knew wasn't anything but his eardrums struggling to recover from the piercing noise that had crippled them.

Half-blind, and deaf. What a way to be.

He stood still in the hallway and stared down the scope, trying to keep himself from shaking, trying to keep the gun still.

The Charger came into sight, and Nick pulled the trigger. He could hear only the lowest whispers of noise. The muzzle's flash in front of him and the sharp kickback of the stock into his shoulder were the only real evidence that the Steyr had gone off at all. The Charger was moving awkwardly in a three-legged gallop amongst the broken wood and other debris; its arm might as well have become a second torso. Nick pulled the bolt and fired again, and then a third time, catching the zombie on the left shoulder. He saw blood, steaming in the cold air, but the Charger didn't falter. It reached the wide-open of the corridor he'd stopped the car in and he knew what was coming next.

What was left of his sense of hearing picked up an undulating, rising noise. Nick dropped the Steyr, letting it hang off his shoulder by the strap, and clamped his hands over his ears. The roaring was loud enough to deafen him from _inside a car_— no way was he letting it rupture his eardrums entirely. That is, if they weren't already. He couldn't tell.

The Charger was flying through the hallway now, and Nick's legs were shaking as he stood his ground, feeling the vibrations traveling through the linoleum floor under his feet. As the zombie cleared the last ten yards or so, Nick scrambled to the side to dodge it, hearing only his own rapid breathing and his heart beating in his chest.

But, at the last possible second, the Charger suddenly changed course.

Instead of coming at Nick, it swung hard to the left and smashed into his car.

Terror shoved his heart up toward his mouth and he heard himself scream _no_, but didn't hear much of it. Shattered glass sprinkled through the air, and the tires squealed as they shifted on the linoleum. Nick had the rifle back in his hands and was firing before he could stop himself, again and again at the Charger's back as it dragged his car — Rob was in there, _Rob was in there!_ — into and half-through the adjacent drywall.

"Not him!" he shouted, and his voice was nothing but a low buzz. "Stay the fuck away from him!"

All he managed to do was get the zombie's attention.

It whirled and lunged for him, faster than Nick could react. He flinched backward but not far enough; it got a loose hold on one of his arms and in his wild scrabble to get out of its grip, his own momentum threw him to the floor. Nick felt splinters and glass digging into his back as he did an awkward half-roll before scrambling to his feet. Instinct took over before he could make a conscious decision, and his feet took off as fast as they could run in the opposite direction. He knew the Charger was right behind him.

He sprinted down a side hallway and into a mess of dimly-lit partitioned cubicles. There were old blood stains on the floors, the walls, frozen corpses that still smelled of rot. Nick got himself to the other end of the room without getting grabbed and put himself behind the thin wall of one of the cubicles. He let out a deep breath and held his rifle tightly, trying to figure out how many shots he'd fired, and how many he had left in the magazine. Four? Three?

His sense of hearing began to return. One of the first things he heard was the thudding of the Charger's feet, a muted snare drum, although he knew it was much closer than it sounded. He realized he could hear himself breathing again, the harsh wheezing pant he'd adopted after receiving a chest injury. The adrenaline was going to wear off soon. It was going to hurt. He knew his arm was going to be bruised and sore for days.

If he lived to see those days.

The vibrations in the floor told him the zombie was coming closer, and he tightened his finger on the trigger of the Steyr, shrinking back against the cheap carpet-covered partition — he knew it was soon to be the only thing between him and the zombie. Nick kept the gun lifted, ready for the thing to come around the corner and find him. Through the ringing in his ears he could hear its heavy, panting breaths, forced through organs that sounded like they shouldn't be working at all.

He heard the Charger making a low, confused grunt, then more of its footsteps, coming closer. It sounded like it wasn't walking on flesh anymore but bone, as if all the skin and muscle on its feet had been stripped away by ice and rock. It reminded him, strangely, of Isaac and his crutches back in Eight Springs.

The Charger's noises came closer, and he flinched, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. He tightened his fingers on his gun, wishing suddenly that he'd brought the revolver instead.

No, that would be way too easy.

He could hear it breathing, so it hadn't gone away. What the hell was it doing? Shouldn't it have already broken past the cubicle wall and ripped him in half by now?

Nick didn't move; he would stay in the same position until his joints froze that way if it kept him from harm. He kept thinking about Rob, still in the car — if Rob was still alive. The image of the vehicle getting pushed into the wall replayed in his head. If he'd lost his dog _and_ his car, he'd really be screwed.

The harsh _tap-tap_ of its feet on the linoleum drew to the right, and then the left. Nick lifted his head, looking above him, half-expecting to see it looming over the partition. But all he saw were the ruined fluorescent lights and battered, molding ceiling. He swallowed, although his mouth was dry and it felt like he was taking in air. He wished that it was enough to force his heart down and out of his throat.

He placed one hand on the floor, shifting carefully into a half-crouched position. Holding the Steyr in one hand was beginning to become a battle in itself. Nick swallowed again, resisted the urge to cough at the dryness, and took a slow, crouched step toward the edge of the partition.

It was still out there, but he couldn't tell where it was anymore, if it was close by or far away, if he was hearing its breathing or just the echo of its breathing. Nick placed his free hand against the partition, shifting so he could lean the Steyr against one knee. Moving forward an inch at a time, he edged out toward the hallway, peering around the corner and wishing he were blind on the other side.

The room was dark and empty. Water dripped from the ceiling and pooled in little spots along the floor. He could see the wet boot prints where he'd gone through, and then the Charger after him, the long lines of water created by what he assumed was the dragging of its arm across the linoleum. He could see the hallway he'd come in from, the soft gray light of the afternoon outside. Nick wondered, if he dropped the gun and took off as fast as he could, if he could reach the SUV before the Charger reached him.

No, probably not.

_Tap-tap-tap_.

It was somewhere behind him, somewhere on the other side of the partition. Nick turned his head, trying to hear it, trying to figure out exactly where it was before it did the same for him. He went to shift the Steyr from one hand to the other, feeling the muscles in his arm burning from holding it up for so long.

The barrel of the gun came down and dragged along the linoleum, creating a scraping noise that was very soft to Nick's ears, but he knew it was probably as loud as firing the gun itself. He picked it back up with a wince.

Nick felt a rumbling behind him before he heard anything, but he had no time to react before the cubicle he was hiding behind was ripped away and there was the Charger, practically on top of him. Nick scrabbled backwards, barely avoiding falling down on his ass. He'd gotten to his feet and brought the gun half-up but the zombie was going for it, just like the Hunter in that movie theater had. Instead of letting the Charger get a grip on the Steyr and therefore himself, Nick let the fucking zombie have it, slipping the strap off his shoulder and over his head. As soon as he was free, he whirled and took off again, hearing the zombie grunt low in frustration and throw the gun to the ground.

Without any path in mind, Nick simply ran, knowing he could very well worm himself right into a corner. He passed the last of the cubicles and came into another unfamiliar hallway. The tall, high windows had been boarded with office desks, leading to a pair of wide double doors on one side of the corridor and a smaller set on the other.

Nick went to the left, for the smaller doorway, hoping perhaps the Charger would be too big for it. A pointless hope, but it was something, at least.

He tried his best to fight back the panic in his throat.

No weapons. He was unarmed. If it got him, that would be it. No fighting back, no lucky shots. It would be over.

Nick shoved the door open and slammed it shut, taking a half-moment to pause and gasp for breath as he leaned his forehead against it. Pain flared up his chest.

All he could think was, _Sean was right. I shouldn't have left. I should've waited longer._

_Sean was right._

He had to find a way to get back to the car. Judging from what he'd seen, it wasn't going to be much use, but hopefully the goods inside weren't damaged.

Like his dog.

Or a jug of gasoline, and a loaded revolver.

Nick felt the floor rumbling again and turned away from the door. He was in a stairwell, and the only path led upward. Hugging one arm to his chest, he started off, taking the steps two at a time. The door at the top of the stairs read _'MANAGEMENT: EMPLOYEES ONLY' _upon a frosted glass window. The doorknob was locked and wouldn't turn.

A flat, muffled _bang_ came from the floor below.

Nick cast about for something, _anything_ to help him. There was a fire extinguisher hanging on the neighboring wall; he dove for it and ripped it away from its hanger, turning and smashing open the colored glass in the door. Nick reached inside and fumbled for the other side of the handle, immediately giving up trying to operate the small lock. He shoved the handle down and the door flew open, tossing him inside. Nick slammed the door shut behind him and there was the Charger, right on the other side of the broken window.

He expected it to try and reach through the window for him, but even though it was a mere few feet away it went for the door instead, lifting up its arm and throwing a heavy punch at it.

Nick didn't have time to wonder at why it was doing that; he turned and pressed deeper into the upper floor. The floor was carpeted, wet, and the whole room smelled like must and mildew. As he went further inside, he saw a few bodies, pushed up and huddled together against the far right wall. There were no weapons with them.

One large, ornate glass door stood on the far side of the room and he followed the floral pattern the carpet took to it. He glanced over the plaque next to the door — '_M. Church, C.E.O.'_ — and went inside. There was a body sprawled over the huge desk, face-down. A hole was blasted in the side of its head, and the gore of the resulting wound was dry and black over the papers and computer and phone.

Still no weapons.

Nick crossed over the soaked carpet and hunkered down behind the desk.

_Excuse me, Mr. Church_.

The _tap-tap_ of the Charger's steps had become low, wet noises on the carpet outside, harder to discern. Nick stared at the legs of the body sitting next to him without really seeing them, concentrating on every breath of noise coming to his ears.

There came the startling, loud sound of shattering glass. The door he'd just come through. Nick glanced around, saw only a few small windows. No escape that way.

It was hard to breathe. He'd taken the wrong turns. He shouldn't have come in here.  
He shouldn't have driven up that hill.

He shouldn't have left Eight Springs.

Nick pushed himself backward, squeezing past the body in the swivel chair and shoving himself underneath the desk, and there he stayed, frozen in fear. He wasn't sure why the Charger was waiting; it _knew_ he was here, it knew exactly where he was. Perhaps just like the Tank, it was taking its time. Like a barn cat and a field mouse. Except this time, Nick didn't have a lake to drown it in or somewhere else to run. He could hear the carpet squishing as the zombie ambled toward the desk, around to the right.

Nick squeezed his eyes shut, begging for it to end quickly.

_Sean was right._

The Charger kept making strange, gruff noises, rather like a snuffling dog, just ahead and to the right of him. He opened his good eye a crack and saw, right in front of him, one of the zombie's legs. Fear tightened down in his limbs and he froze up — the last time he'd seen a Charger this close was back in North Carolina, with the husband and wife. It looked like all of its skin was scabbed up and sloughing off.

The zombie took another step forward, and its arm came into view. It leaned upon it, taking those whuffing breaths of air.

Nick was right beneath it, noiseless, tucked up underneath the table.

With a grunt, the Charger lifted its arm and pushed the body on the swivel chair away from the desk. There weren't really fingers on its hand anymore, just stubbly extensions of black, ruined bone, but it lifted them up and dragged them across the stiff, dead body, tossing it down to the floor. Nick watched as it twisted the chair's swivel legs once, then turn toward him.

He stopped breathing.

With a rattling noise, it bent down a little, dragging its fingers along the carpet, then under the desk. It tightened its grip down and lifted the table up and away from him.

A whine of fear came from his throat, and he knew that by making noise, he was already dead.

The Charger didn't take notice of his voice. At all. It continued what it was doing, pawing around, tilting its mangled skull. The eyes were deep-set, white and hazy, just like the one Nick had on his left. It seemed like it was looking right at him but nothing happened, it didn't attack, and now it was putting the desk back down on its legs. Nick stared at it, feeling his mouth dropping open.

It couldn't see him.

It couldn't _fucking see him._

He couldn't believe it. His mind just turned this same piece of information over and over, because he was unable to register it, while the Charger turned away from the table, going back to the dead body on the floor, muttering incomprehensible words.

_It can't see me._

_How did it _find_ me?_

The zombie grumbled loudly and shoved the body and chair away, where it cracked into the opposite wall. Its impact knocked something off — a picture frame or a light — which fell to the floor somewhere on the other side of the room. Nick watched as the Charger made that low murmuring of curiosity again, and thundered to where the object had fallen. He heard the _crunch_ of glass.

A thought whipped through his head. He glanced around wildly and found a paperweight on the floor. Leaning down, he picked it up. It was heavy.

He threw it across the room, where it hit the wall opposite him and thudded to the carpet.

The Charger whirled and roared — Nick threw his hands over his ears again, feeling the reverberation of the noise in his chest. There was a flash of movement and the zombie was there, coming at the wall like a freight train. When it hit, Nick expected it to break completely through, but it didn't. It left a pretty big dent, and the whole building shook for a second, and then it stood there, tilting its head as if confused.

Nick began inching out from beneath the desk.

He straightened back up slowly, feeling his whole body shaking. The Charger was a few yards away, back to him, turning over the paperweight on the floor. Nick stepped toward the edge of the table, setting his feet down with gentle, careful motions, as if he were walking on a tightrope. He kept his eye centered on the zombie as he slipped around the table's corner and began backing up toward the door. If his heart were beating any louder, he was sure the Charger would be able to sense it.

Nick could practically hear his bones creaking now as he kept on. The zombie set its arm down and turned around, facing him.

_It can't see me, it can't see me, it can't see me_, he repeated fervently in his head.

The Charger went back toward the desk.

Nick continued to retreat. He was so focused on the zombie in front of him that he neglected to look behind him, and he bumped into a tiny bookshelf that he hadn't noticed when he entered. It was shoddily built, or old and rotting, but neither of those things mattered, because there was a vase on the top which wobbled, and then fell.

Without even waiting to see it hit the ground, Nick turned and sprinted out the door. The Charger roared, furious, behind him, as he tore for the stairwell.

There was a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, on the edge of his vision, and it was upon him again, rushing past his blind side and into the door with the broken window.

It was blocking off his exit.

His only exit.

So Nick turned and ran in the only direction he hadn't gone yet — further into the upper floor, into a small throng of low desks, toward another entryway that likely held the room he was going to die in. He reached the door before the Charger reached him, and it was unlocked.

Nick scrambled into the darkened room, throwing the door shut behind him — almost expecting it to bounce right back open again at the Charger's pursuit. The smell of rot met his nose, but he barely registered it, crossing the floor filled with bodies and toward a long table encircled in chairs.

Bright colors flashed in the corner of his eye; when he turned to glance at it, he saw a hanging banner:

'_HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE!'_

His eye dropped and flashed across the rest of the room's contents. Dead zombies, dead people. One of them still had a birthday hat on. Plates and napkins scattered everywhere, the smeared remains of a cake, all of it splattered with blood.

Behind him, the door made a muted _crack_. He didn't even turn around, he knew the Charger would be _right there_, so he lunged for the table and scrabbled underneath it, past the overturned chairs and decomposed bodies, just like he had in the room before.

Nick heard its feet, _tap-tap-tapping_ on the floor as it closed in on its target with a bellow that resonated in his chest.

There was a hand on his leg, sharp and vice-like, and it yanked at him, hard, dragging him from under the table. Scrabbling desperately with his fingernails, he caught them on a body, feeling the skin slough away under his fingers. His hands came upon a paper plate, on the dry and crusted remains of either brains or the cake, and then something cold and hard and metal. He felt a wooden handle and wrapped his fingers around it.

The Charger tore him out from under the table like someone extracting a rat from a cage, and flipped him over onto his back, going for a hold on his torso. Nick gripped the wooden handle of whatever it was he'd grabbed with both hands, seeing the flash of light on metal, creating a bright, wedged point.

Heavy, hard fingers clamped down on his chest and the pain flared. He felt himself scream more than he heard it, and couldn't fight the grip around him; it may as well have been set concrete. His vision blurred but he saw the Charger's face coming up close, its eyes milky white and useless, the jaw still hanging down off one side, the rotted hole where its throat was supposed to be —

Nick took his chance, knowing it was his last, and stabbed upward with the tool in his hands.

It sank deep into the space between the Charger's nonexistent chin and atrophied collarbone, piercing something soft and pliable — it was like a needle going into silk. Something hot and wet sprayed across him; down his face and his chest and arms. It was dark, nearly black, and he realized that it was _blood_.

He twisted the weapon and tugged it back out, then went for that soft spot again, but he didn't need to. Suddenly he was returned to the ground, as the zombie went face-first into the floor, and he was still in the Charger's grip but it was twitching now, opening and closing spasmodically. Nick shoved himself back and away, adrenaline forcing him past the pain as he returned to his feet, holding the tool, shaking, in front of him.

The Charger spasmed on the floor, blood spreading out underneath it. Nick backed away, until he was against the wall, watching it drag its fingers across the linoleum as it fought to get at him again. Its entire body shivered with the strain of movement, but it couldn't get a grip on the blood-slick floor, and came no further.

A low moan came to Nick's ears, but he couldn't tell if it was the zombie or himself.

He watched as the Charger shuddered, convulsed for another second, then fall still and quiet.

Nick dropped his arms and stood leaning over his knees for a minute, fighting to take slow, deep breaths. The pain wasn't as bad as he was expecting, but he'd been expecting them to feel like they had on the lake. He shifted the weapon in his hand and looked down at it.

A cake knife.

He'd killed a Charger with a cake knife.

Nick swallowed, and felt tears pricking at his eyes. He let them come, hoping that they would help clear them of the blood that had spattered across his face. Every breath came harder than the last. He thought, for a few seconds, that he was going to hyperventilate.

Then he thought of Rob.

Everything else left his head. Nick stepped around the body of the Charger and out into the open doorway. The smell of must was still prevalent, and there was only silence. Even his own breathing seemed muted now.

He went back down the stairs, moving as quickly as he could. His leg wasn't so steady, and he fought with the familiar feeling of being out of breath. The hallway that led to the offices where his car had been smashed looked a lot longer this time around. It was starting to get dark outside, now.

His Steyr was still laying on the floor, between a few partitions, where the Charger had thrown it.

He scooped it up and hurried on, at a weak jog.

Nick blinked hard, trying to mentally prepare himself for what he was about to see.

It didn't help.

The SUV was twisted, ruined. Irreparable. It looked like the result of a T-bone accident. He could only really see the front of it; the spiderweb of cracks along the windshield, the crumpled frame, the headlights that had gone dead from the damage. The rest of it was hidden, punched through the drywall. Nick approached as if he were coming upon a wounded animal.

It was silent.

"Rob?"

He couldn't see inside. It was too dark, the windshield was too ruined.

Nick tore the flashlight from where it had been taped to the barrel of his rifle and clicked it on, leaving the gun on the floor and scrambling up onto the ruined drywall and shoving himself past the hole in the wall.

"...Rob?"

A layer of dust had fallen over the car. Nick grit his teeth, screamed a silent prayer in his head, and brushed it away from one of the windows, lifting the flashlight to look inside.

Rob's dopey face stared back at him, tongue lolling out, ear perked up high.

Relief pooled through him, and Nick sagged against the frame of the car, taking a long breath. "You lucky fucking mutt," he said, and felt himself laugh. "Jesus Christ. Scared me to hell and back."

He squeezed himself to the back of the SUV, trying to yank the back hatch open. It wouldn't budge.

Nick sighed and crawled back out, bending down to retrieve his rifle. He turned it around and used the stock to smash open the back window. Rob clambered out, tail wagging, whining loudly. He shook himself off and jumped up, pawing at the man's chest.

Nick reflexively shoved him away. "Down, dammit."

Rob pawed at his feet.

"Oh, don't bitch. I didn't want you getting killed. Trust me, that Charger would have torn you a new everything."

Nick pointed the flashlight into the back of the car.

"Looks like we're walking," he said, and shook his head.

He thought back to when he'd first gotten out to confront the Charger. He had left the vehicle running, thinking it would be a better idea, in case he needed to get back to it and shift into reverse and out of the building in a hurry.

The Charger had gone for the car because it had been on, the engine had been purring beneath the hood, and that was what the Charger had targeted. Nick leaned his forehead against the lip of the broken hatch. "Vibrations," he muttered aloud. That was why it had only found him in the offices when he'd scraped the barrel of the gun along the floor. "Huh."

He'd lost the car, but he hadn't lost his life, or his dog.

Better than nothing.

But he wasn't going to make it very far without a vehicle.

* * *

Nick slept a broken, fragmented sleep in the back of the SUV for the last time that night. It was colder than ever with the shattered window, and when morning finally came and the sun rose, Nick was already awake. He leaned against the back of the car and waited until he could see properly before digging into the supplies and trying to decide what he could take with him.

He found he couldn't carry as much as he used to be able to. The medical supplies he needed to take, there was no way around it. He shoved as much food as he could into the leftover space in the duffel and then realized he still needed bullets for his rifle. Nick sacrificed what he could, substituting a few days' worth rations for the ability to defend himself. He took the revolver too — his fail-safe — sticking it under his belt at the small of his back, where he could reach it easily.

When he'd whittled down his supplies into a manageable weight, he stepped out into the hallway, Rob at his side, and took one last, long look at the car that had brought him almost all the way through Pennsylvania.

"Some lucky asshole is gonna come across this thing and win the fucking lottery."

He sighed, turned, and started off through the building. The sun was bright outside, the roads were clear and empty, and nothing stirred beyond the clouds bunched in the sky.

Nick walked.

* * *

_(A/N: LOL oh wow. Do I still have readers after that MASSIVE OVER-A-MONTH-LONG HIATUS? Really, I didn't mean to take so long. I have a lot on my plate. Medical issues and three jobs to work not withstanding, I hope you, at the very least, enjoyed this chapter. I'm so sorry it took forever. Also, I am not going to say 'see you next week' because I don't want to jinx it._

_Thanks to Sanima, my beta-reader, and extra special thanks to Larry, for stepping in as my second beta this week, as Kit is busy enjoying her new baby. [Congratulations, Kit!]  
_

_Coming up next: The Hitchhiker.)  
_


	31. The Hitchhiker

The roads provided him nothing.

Nick checked every vehicle he came across, attempting to get one started, but everything he found was either dead or totaled in some crash. They were stripped of all their usefulness, save for shelter to take to when night fell. Nick had taken to hunkering down just a few hours before sunset, following the rule he'd taken on earlier, with the boys: if there was a place to sleep, he had to take it. There was no knowing if there would still be something around when it got dark.

He began to regret exchanging food for bullets. The roads were empty, cold. Every zombie he saw was long-dead and frozen. The deep snow he forged through was an untouched blanket, smooth and unmarred by footsteps or tire tracks. Not even animals walked on the road he took.

On the third day, he finally crossed into New York state. Here, the highway he'd been following for the last week — 220 — split off into a handful of different directions. Nick took the path that went eastward, passing a few small towns that stood rigidly in the distance. Trudging through the snow was slow going. On a good day, he'd make about fifteen miles, although he would be exhausted by the tenth. He slept in the backs of cars and the covered beds of trucks, always cold, oftentimes shivering so hard that his own movement would keep him awake. Rob kept close to him while he slept, and every time he awoke, the dog's head was on his neck or his shoulder, trying to keep him warm.

Not a minute passed on the roads where he wasn't freezing. He tried stomping his feet and quickening his pace, but that just wore him out faster than ever. The temperature dropped and the snow began falling again. Wind shrieked down from the direction he was walking, dragging the snow with it.

When a town appeared on the horizon, Nick went for it instead of trying to go around. It looked just as all the others before: abandoned, empty. Another dead city, in a dead country, in a dead world.

Nick wondered, suddenly, how many people were left alive, total. A thousand? Ten thousand? Perhaps there were more survivors in the warmer states.

God, he missed Georgia.

Nick approached the city as the sun began to set. It didn't bring color this time, just the same ever-darkening slate gray. The city's welcoming sign was still standing, but the name had been covered by bright yellow paint, and over that:

'_there is nothing left. there is nothing left._

_turn back'_

Nick tore his eyes from the sign and looked ahead at road curving down toward the city. He stared out at the darkening streets and derelict buildings. There was no light, nothing that hinted at any spark of life or movement. He studied the snow, the way it had fallen, and the way the wind had pushed it against everything. There were no footprints he could see, no lines made by tire treads, nothing. Blank. Empty.

He let out a shivering breath, and started toward the town. There were a few concrete barriers set up, much like those in Savannah and New Orleans. Long fences had been stretched in between random buildings like cobwebs. There was no noise but those of his boots and Rob's paws crunching in the snow.

Nick wandered to the first building he could find that was barricaded, not wanting to be wandering in unfamiliar territory in the dark. He tugged at a few slats of wood that had been placed haphazardly over the building's windows, straining at them until he'd opened enough space for him and Rob to squeeze through.

Inside, it was dim and dusty. He located his flashlight and turned it on, illuminating a wide room filled with cushioned benches. Nick walked along the musty carpet, flicking the light around. When it landed on a few bronze, carved plaques on the other side of the building, and then a podium, he realized what kind of building he'd crawled into.

Stepping quietly between the rows of seats, he shined his flashlight on the nearest plaque.

'_TAKE REFUGE IN THE NAME OF'_

The last word of the scripture had been overwritten in yellow paint.

_'SMITH & WESSON_

_'ZEPHANIAH 3:12'_

Nick squinted at it for a second before dropping his duffel on the nearest pew and beginning his sweep. There wasn't much around; a couple of bodies, rotting in one of the back rooms. He picked through the meager supplies still left and came away with a few cans of food. There were a couple of boxes of bullets, but they weren't the right caliber for his rifle or his revolver, so he left them.

Someone had camped here before him — probably the two dead bodies in the back. There was a decorative fireplace in the main room that had been jury-rigged into the real thing with a dryer vent hose and some metal grating. He found some cardboard boxes full of magazines and books in another room and carried them over. Setting them alight, he sat in front of the fire with Rob curled up next to him and enjoyed the heat, picking out the dusty can of apricots that he'd found. He dug around in his duffel bag and found the big Ziploc of kibble, grabbing a handful and placing it on the floor in front of his dog before starting into his own meal.

"You know," he muttered, "I was never scared of dying of scurvy 'till now."

Rob wagged his tail at being spoken to as he licked up the food off the floor piece-by-piece.

"I always thought I'd get shanked in prison or something, y'know. Piss off the wrong person and get shot." He scooped out a shapeless glob of orange fruit with his dented spoon, pulling a face at the taste of it. "Didn't think it'd be like this. Always thought I'd be staring death in the face when it came for me."

The food was gone long before he wanted to be done eating it. He tossed the empty can away and leaned back against one of the pews, staring into the fire. Rob came around and lay beside him, setting his head in his lap. He whined.

"Still hungry, huh?" Nick dug his fingers into the dog's fur, scratching under his collar and smiling slightly as Rob leaned into his touch. "Yeah... me too."

Sleep wasn't easy. For once, it wasn't the cold that was keeping him awake, but the noise of the stormy wind outside, rattling against the windows. Nick lay with Rob close against his back and kept his eye on the fireplace. The embers did nothing to brighten the room — at least, they didn't create any significant light that his vision could detect — so he lay and listened to the creaking of the church all around him, trying to remember what the building had looked like during the day.

His stomach roared, and he couldn't stop his mind from drifting to the remaining few cans of food in the duffel bag. It had only been four days since the loss of the car, and he was already running out. Pretty soon, he'd get into the last can, and then what?

_Don't think about it, don't think about it_, he told himself.

He'd find something tomorrow. There was a whole town to search yet.

There had to be _something_ out there.

* * *

A noise jolted him awake, but when he sat up and looked around, he couldn't be sure if he'd really heard anything, or just dreamed it. He generally didn't hear many honking horns out on the roads.

Nick sighed, rubbing his face. The train again.

He wasted no time in getting up and gathering his things. Sleeping on the floor had made him sore, and his throat tickled with the urge to cough. Nick prayed that it was because of sleeping near a fire and not the first sign of impending illness. Even a simple cold would probably kill him at this point.

There was no fresh snow outside, leaving everything just as gray and dull as it had been yesterday. He stood looking out the window he'd entered through, moving his eye from building to building, wondering which had the highest chance of hiding scavengeable supplies inside.

After a few minutes, he looked down at his dog, readjusting the duffel on his shoulder. "Ready to go, Rob?" He scoffed and shook his head. "Stupid question. You always are."

Nick climbed out into the streets. The wind bit at his face and cut through his layers of clothing as if they weren't even there. He turned his head away from it, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. Rob stood in the snow next to him, unfazed by the chill.

"Christ. It's freezing out."

He made his way toward the closest house and stepped onto the porch. Immediately he was glad of the protection it offered from the wind. A rattle came from above them, and when he lifted his head to look, he saw a dead body half-hanging from an upper floor window. The window's shutter banged back and forth against its skull. Its clothes hung down off its arms, torn and faded, but the only blood Nick could see came from its throat, which the glass of the broken window had evidently ripped open. He tilted his head.

"Doesn't look like a zombie, huh?" he muttered, stepping up onto the porch. The door was unlocked, but wouldn't budge. Nick turned the handle and leaned his shoulder into the scarred wood, giving an experimental push. He looked down at Rob, who was sniffing in the bushes around the front porch. His tail was held up high; he wasn't nervous.

So Nick wouldn't be either.

Readjusting his grip on the handle, he slammed his shoulder into the door. He completely expected it to hold firm, but instead there was the sound of something snapping on the inside of the apartment and the door flew open, nearly depositing him face-first into a marble foyer.

The first thing he saw was, unsurprisingly, dead bodies. They hadn't been touched for a while, and the too-familiar scent of frozen rot filled the air. He could hear the rattle of the upstairs shutter, muffled by the rest of the house. Rob came in behind him, nails clicking on the floor. The sound seemed to echo through the still space before them, though it was crammed with furniture and bodies. A chill that he could not blame entirely on the wind ran up his spine.

Nick set down his bag and took up his rifle, glancing down at Rob, who was sniffing at the foot of a set of stairs to his right. His tail had dropped down. Nick looked down the adjacent hall and started down it, stepping carefully over the clump of bodies on the floor. He could tell by the red staining around their mouths and hands that they were zombies. A few of them seemed to have been gored open by something large and sharp, while others had gaping holes that he interpreted as bullet wounds.

"Something big put these guys down."

Rob followed behind him. He could hear the dog sniffing.

The hallway brought him to a wide kitchen, where a shattered sliding glass door had allowed the snow entry. Nick kept himself against the wall, glancing down another hallway, with a flight of stairs to his right. When he saw and heard nothing for several moments, he shouldered the rifle and dug into the kitchen cupboards.

As he expected, most everything was gone already. There were a few cans of soup far in the back of one cupboard, tucked behind a pan. When he turned and wrenched the refrigerator door open, he found only rotten milk and the remains of some kind of meat, decomposing liquid frozen in drips on the rack. Rob wiggled in underneath him and snapped for the mess.

"Oh, God, Rob, gross," Nick said, pulling the dog back by his collar. "I know you're hungry, but you can't have that." He shoved the dog back and shut the fridge door. Rob looked up at him, tail hanging down low, then scratched at the refrigerator and whined.

Nick shook his head. "No, Rob. It's too rotten." He made sure the fridge was tightly shut before he started down the unexplored hallway, whistling for Rob to follow. The dog's interest was fixed on the icebox and trying to get it open. He sighed and continued on anyway, listening to the scratch of claws on plastic.

The house moaned above him when he got to the stairs. It was dim on the upper floor, and the wooden steps creaking under his boots were noisy in the quiet. The ceiling was low, and oddly-angled, and the tan carpet on the floor was splotched with a dark brown crust of dried blood. The body he'd seen outside was still here — not that he'd expected it to move. He glanced around, observing the smeared hand prints on the wall. A set of deep rivets ran along part of the low, arched ceiling. He brushed a finger over them. Out the window, he could see a few lumps beneath the snow on the roof. Something else dead, he suspected.

He shoved the body over with his foot, unfazed by the gaping wound that had created a second mouth on its neck. It wasn't a zombie. Nick searched its pockets and found a cell phone and pack of matches; the latter he shoved into his jacket. The cellphone powered on long enough for him to take note of the time — just past eight o'clock — and the date — February fifteenth.

Nick scoffed. "Can't believe I made it to thirty-six years old." He tossed the phone to the floor, and straightened up, wincing. Still sore. Sore all over, really. Nick wasn't sure if it was the cold or the injuries or his age or a combination of all three. "Most people aren't limping by thirty-six," he mumbled to himself. "...Most people aren't alive, though, I guess."

There wasn't much else in the loft — boxes of clothes and menial things that were all spattered with blood. He found a few pairs of socks and a gray scarf that was still in the process of being knitted, but it was at a decent length. Nick burned the yarn apart with his lighter and melted the frayed remnants before wrapping it around his neck.

When he came back downstairs, he saw Rob had gotten the fridge door open and was licking at the rotten meat on the rack.

"Ugh, Rob—! I told you _not_ to do that!"

Nick grabbed Rob by his collar again, but when he went to tug him away from the fridge, Rob did something he'd never seen the dog do. He snarled, short and loud, and snapped at him.

Startled, he yanked his hand away scrambled backward, until his lower back hit the kitchen counter. "What the _fuck_, Rob. What was that for?"

Either from his tone, or realizing that he'd made a mistake, the dog immediately dropped his head and skulked away from the fridge. Nick resisted the reflexive urge to go over and kick the dog, and was horrified to find that it had been his first instinct. He frowned and shut the fridge again, watching as Rob went away down the hall, tail tucked between his legs.

"Rob. Hey, Robber. It's okay." Nick bent down, trying to show that he wasn't going to hurt him. "Come here, boy. Rob, come here."

The dog came back around, cowering, tail wagging as he lay on the floor and rolled onto his back.

"Why are you doing that?" Nick sighed. "I don't speak dog. Come on, I'm not gonna hit you." He pet Rob on the head for a minute, talking quietly. "I just don't want you to bite me. I know you're hungry. I'm hungry too. But we can't just eat anything, okay? I gotta have you around. Y'know, to watch my back." He twisted the dog's ear and felt himself trying to smile. "You stupid mutt."

Rob wriggled close and licked his face. He twisted his head away and sighed, getting back to his feet. "Come on. Let's check the next house. We'll find something good."

Rob wagged his tail faster, and trotted after him.

* * *

They passed from house to house, apartment to apartment, like hikers jumping from rock to rock in a rushing stream. He couldn't spend long in the freezing cold outside; the wind of the storm was just too strong. Even in the short minutes that he spent moving from one piece of shelter to the next were almost too much. He was tired and sapped of energy before the sun even began to set.

He staggered down what was to be the last street he explored that day, eventually reaching a bank on the corner. Nick climbed into the broken window, finding that the temperature had barely changed from the outside to the inside. He made his way round the long, partitioned counter and slid down to the floor, dropping his duffel loudly next to him and panting, exhausted.

Rob came close and Nick leaned back against the cheap particleboard, listening to the howling wind outside. His hands were shaking and he felt weak all over, as if just waking from a deep sleep. His stomach hurt, even worse now than his ribs, a deep throbbing pain that pulsed from his gut all the way down his legs and arms.

"Okay. I gotta eat something," he mumbled, unzipping his duffel bag. He gave Rob his share of dog kibble and ate one of the cans of soup he'd found, dismayed that it had done nothing to rid him of the shakiness. His stomach roared for more, and he tried to shut it up with half a bottle of snow-water, but then he just felt dizzy.

He got unsteadily to his feet and searched the bank. Not a damn thing.

So he lay down on the hard floor and rested his head on the duffel, gazing at the pale ceiling above him. Sleep was impossible. Nick murmured softly the lyrics of songs he could remember, uncaring if they were correct or if the songs he was singing had even existed in the first place.

He was so tired, and yet sleep wouldn't come. The sun set and he was plunged into nighttime, and he stared out at nothing, imagining things on the other side of the darkness. And food. Always, food. He remembered his life before the Infection, meals he'd never finished and some he'd never even touched, and hated it. Hated himself.

Nick chewed on one of his shirt sleeves, swallowing spit, and prayed for sleep.

* * *

When he woke up, frozen bronze light was coming in through the broken windows. For a long few moments, he thought it was just moonlight, and it wasn't morning, but then his brain came back to itself, and he realized that it was sunlight. It took him a long while to fight back to his feet, and when he finally stood, he had to grab onto the bank counter to stop the vertigo from dragging him back down.

Nick ate the other can of soup and stared for a long handful of minutes at the last two cans. Refried beans and black olives. Both of them sounded like delicacies.

He stuffed them into the bottom of his duffel bag and zipped it shut.

Outside, the wind had calmed to a soft breeze and the sun had come out. Nick squinted against the light, shielding his eye with his hand. The snow seemed to have become a mirror, creating a dazzling reflection of the clear sunlight beating down from the clear sky. He rubbed his watering eye and wandered out into the street.

Nick kept his head bent, enjoying the feeling of the sunlight on him. He kept his hands in his pockets as he walked. Rob stayed in step with him.

"Looks like the storm finally broke," he said, glancing up to the streets ahead of them. The snow was knee-deep in some places, where the wind had pressed it against cars and fire hydrants. Nick tried to keep under the eaves of buildings, where he could avoid both the deep snow and the sunlight. He brushed the snow off of cars and peered inside, crawled into buildings and searched every inch.

He couldn't understand how everything was so _bare._ There had obviously been others here before him, but to take _everything_? Had wild animals come through too, scavenging and taking all they could find?

Nick had returned to overturning trash cans and picking through piled refuse on floors, remembering the movie theater and how they'd found food in them. Even the memory of the gritty taste of that three-month-old popcorn was becoming mouthwatering.

At the end of that day, he ate the last can of food he had.

He huddled inside a hotel room, in the corner, under some filthy blankets he'd found on the beds, and shivered. Rob stayed close, and it surprised him, because he expected the dog to forge off on his own for food. But he never budged from his side, not since the incident the other day.

"I'm so hungry, Rob. Really. Really, really, really, hungry."

Nick bumped his head against the wall behind him, hugging his knees.

"I really want a steak. Medium-rare. Pink and juicy. A1 sauce on the side. Baked potato, loaded with butter, sour cream, chives. Steamed vegetables. Carrots, broccoli, cauliflower." He pressed his palms against his eyes. "I hated vegetables as a kid. Always hid them in my napkin. I got away with that a lot. Dad only caught me once, and I... I never did it again after that."

The dog was asleep next to him.

"I think I'm losing my mind, Rob."

He started crying, and didn't stop until he fell asleep.

* * *

The weather stayed calm for a few more days. Nick made his way haltingly through the city, always searching, overturning things, scavenging for food. He started eating the dog kibble, but soon, that was gone, too. Rob would stare at him for a long time whenever they rested, expecting him to open the bag and bring out the food. He never did.

On the fifth day, inside a convenience store, he found three cans of microwaveable ravioli. He crouched down right there and ate, cold out of the can, desperate for fuel. The second he popped open and gave to the dog, and the third he stashed away carefully into his bag.

When the seventh day came and went without sign of anything living or a single scrap of food, Nick made the decision to leave. He knew it wasn't logical, he knew it was suicidal, but he couldn't stop walking. Maine was close. It was close, and he was going to reach it. The sunlight held, and Nick started on the road out of the town.

In a car, overturned in a ditch off the road, he found a box of granola bars. Eight of them. He shared one with Rob, then another. It tasted simultaneously like ash and the best thing he'd ever eaten in his life. Afterward, he stood up and stared back at the city for a few minutes, then turned and continued down the road.

* * *

Time passed. He didn't know how many days had come and gone, and he knew that the thought should have worried him, but he couldn't summon up the ability to care. _That_ should have worried him too, but somehow he only felt numb. Numb, and hungry.

It was late afternoon. The highway stretched in both directions — ahead of him and behind him — until he could no longer see it. One giant white line that never ended or began. This was what it felt like to travel this highway, devoid of cars, of houses, lined with only sparse trees. He'd never thought New York state would be so empty.

He regretted leaving the city, but nothing would have come to him there. If he hadn't moved on, he would have died. He just had to keep moving. No more faltering. The next time he stopped like that again, it would be over.

Now, _that_ terrified him.

The snow hadn't fallen too harshly today. Nick still left bootprints behind in the powdery film left on top of the tarmac, mirrored by Rob's paw prints as the dog kept in step beside him. A chill wind passed over the road in waves, creating snake-like patterns of thin snow that flowed from one side to the other. He tried not to stare at it for too long; it was too distracting, he had to pay attention to the road.

With each mile, the Steyr became heavier and more meaningless. Nick wondered how the rifle had gotten so heavy, and idly theorized that cold weather might have changed the properties of the materials it was built with. There wasn't much else to do but wonder at immaterial things — it helped to at least keep his thoughts turned away from the steadily gnawing pain below his ribcage.

Nick ate as he walked, from his precious stash of granola bars. He ate slowly, savoring every bite, while wishing he could eat everything he had just so he wouldn't have to feel hungry for a while. He gave half to Rob, as he always did.

All day they trekked their way down the road, and the view hadn't changed at all. The road was still an infinite line, and they nothing but specks on a wire.

Sunset was coming quickly, and there wasn't a house or car in sight. It was getting colder and colder. Nick hadn't been so cold since the frozen lake, and the slow journey to Eight Springs. At least then he'd had another person helping to keep him warm — and someone who would talk to him. He kept his head bent down, blinking back the perpetual reflexive tears building in his eyes from the wind.

Nick kept walking. He knew if he stopped, he would freeze to death. Rob would never be able to keep him warm enough for long enough. His steps were beginning to falter while he cursed silently in his mind at the emptiness of the road ahead of him.

Rob trotted next to him, tail and ears down, breath fogging thickly in the air. Nick was shivering violently. The supplies in his duffel rattled together with an obnoxious noise. He was too tired to still them, but there wasn't anything within a hundred miles he could alert. Everything was frozen.

It got darker, and his vision proved to be useless faster than he imagined it would. He took the flashlight from his duffel and clicked it on, pointing it ahead of him. The sporadic movement of the beam made him realize how hard he was shaking. There was still no shelter, nothing to huddle beneath or break into. A few weak snowflakes fluttered into the light and back out again.

He'd never felt so cold. He thought back to just a few days ago, to when he'd slept in cars and abandoned houses, and tried to imagine the warmth he'd felt there. He remembered the heater in the SUV, and then the recovery room in Eight Springs, and then Elaine's bed. He remembered how miserable New Orleans had been, with the heat and the humidity. How much he'd complained about it. Now he feared to open his mouth, thinking that doing so would let the cold deeper into his body and kill him faster.

A sound came down the highway. Rob was the first to prick his ear and look behind them. Nick followed the dog's gaze, sluggishly pulling his rifle from his shoulder.

It wasn't zombies, but instead, something strangely out of place and yet perfectly normal and everyday:

A pair of headlights.

He thought his heart had stopped, but he was still standing, and the vehicle was still approaching. He lowered the rifle and next to him, Rob growled.

"Shh, shh," Nick murmured, stepping to the side of the road as the headlights approached.

They belonged to what looked to be either a small bus or an airport shuttle. It appeared to have been originally black in color, but there were so many dents and scrapes on the thing that it could have easily been green or blue. As it came closer, he saw the spotlights that had been built into the roof, and the corrugated metal drilled into the sides. Paint-strokes of dried blood and frozen gore covered the thing from front to back.

Out of reflex more than anything, Nick stuck his thumb out at the shuttle as it closed the last bit of distance. He was shocked when it slowed to a stop next to him. Rob stood behind, hackles high and stiff in the breeze.

The driver's side window rolled down, crackling from ice and frozen blood. An Asian man appeared, leaning his arm over the side of the door. He was wearing heavy clothes and his hair was thick, curly — and unusually clean.

"Hey, buddy," he said. "Whatcha doin' out here?"

"F— freezing my ass off," Nick replied, fighting not to stutter. "Can I get a ride?"

The man shrugged. "Where you headed?"

Unconsciously, Nick crept closer to the van, his body feeling the heat radiating from the engine. "Maine. I'm going to Maine," he told the driver. Desperation clawed at his throat. He thought of the revolver in his pocket. He thought of drawing it and murdering the stranger right where he was.

"You a carrier?"

Nick blinked. "Is there anything else left but carriers?"

There was a long stretch of silence, where the man seemed to be weighing his options, and Nick felt his stomach plummeting lower and lower. He felt his chance dropping, slipping away where he would never be able to reach it again.

Then, the driver smiled widely and motioned to the passenger side door. "Climb in, buddy."

Nick nearly fell on his face in his rush to the other side. The driver leaned over and unlocked the door for him. His eyes were watering from the warmth before he even got all the way in. Rob jumped in after him, squeezing in between the dashboard and the front seat.

The shuttle was spacious, with a high roof. The inside been gutted of its seating and replaced with other furnishings. There was a folded-down cot in one corner, some boxes in another. A miniature refrigerator and a portable coil stove. Nick caught the smell of cooking, and his brain scrambled to identify what kind of food he was smelling.

Before Nick could say anything, the driver was sticking his hand out toward him.

"I'm Kyle. Kyle Lang."

"Nick," he said, shaking the man's hand.

Kyle smiled again and tilted his head, wiping his hand on his pants as he studied Nick's face. "You got some wicked awesome scars there. A Weeper, huh?"

"What's a We—" Nick started, then stopped. He shivered and wiped his eye. "Oh. Yeah. One of those."

"Cool dog." Kyle continued, pointing down at Rob. His smile never faded. "Where'd you get him?"

"North Carolina."

The driver leaned down and reached out to pet the dog. He didn't look too threatening to Nick, but Rob leapt up, teeth bared, and snapped at him. Nick gasped, grabbing the dog's collar and yanking him back. There was the hollow _snap_ of his teeth closing over air, instead of the man's hand.

"Whoa!" Kyle yelped, flinching back. "Never mind, then. Jeez. Better keep that thing in check, man."

"I'm sorry," Nick mumbled, glaring down at his dog. "He's never done that before." Rob kept his eyes fixed on the driver, not moving. "He's usually really friendly. I don't know what's wrong with him."

"Well, just keep a hold of him, and there won't be any problems, okay?"

Nick yielded. "Okay. I won't let him go anywhere."

"Good. Now that we've got that settled... let's get you to Maine, huh, buddy?" Kyle put the shuttle into gear and moved back onto the road. The engine hummed readily in front of them.

The feeling of hunger became less intense as the sensation of heat settled into his body. Nick sank down into the seat, gripping tight to Rob's collar, huddling into his clothes. Warm, warm, _warm_. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Thank you, Kyle," he said. The truth in his own voice surprised him.

"No problem. Hate to see a fellow survivor freeze to death out here."

Nick watched blearily out the window. For the first time in nearly a month, the thought came to his head:

_I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it to Maine._

The road hissed as it passed underneath them.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my (amazingly loyal) beta-reader, Kit.  
_

_Herp derp I am the slowest fanfic writer ever._

_That is all.)  
_


	32. The Passenger

"So, what's in Maine?"

The words were so loud and alien to Nick's ears that he jerked in surprise when he heard them, pulling himself out of the sleepy comfort that the shuttle's warmth provided. It had been a long time since he'd had a conversation. Eight Springs already felt like years ago.

"Hm?" he mumbled, shifting around in the seat and trying to get a better look at the driver. The only source of light came from the dashboard — the speedometer and a digital clock — and it wasn't bright enough to be of much help. Nick could just barely see the outline of his rounded face. He looked to be around Ellis' age. "I'm sorry?"

"I asked what was in Maine," Kyle repeated, keeping his hands at the bottom of the steering wheel. "You're pretty dead-set to get there."

Nick burrowed deeper into his jacket, frowning and wondering why people were always so interested in him. "A safe zone," he said. Rob's head was in his lap. He reached down and scratched behind the dog's ear. "Supposed to be a safe zone, anyway."

"Oh. Well, there was one in Pennsylvania, down south. If that's all you're looking for, it might be a bit warmer than here."

"Yeah, Eight Springs. I know," Nick murmured. "I've already been there."

"I see." Kyle leaned back in his seat. "So I take it you're... looking for someone? Or maybe you just like the cold." He chuckled and looked back out the window, pushing a hand through his thick hair. "You don't strike me as a real lover of winter, buddy."

"There's a few people I know... they're supposed to meet me up there," Nick supplied, feeling a yawn coming on. He fought it back and talked instead, hearing the sluggishness creeping through his own voice. "Don't know why the hell they picked Maine. If it gets much colder I think my face is going to fall off." Not like that would make him any easier on the eyes.

"It's definitely chilly," Kyle agreed. He leaned forward a little and stared into the dark outside the shuttle, looking left and right and then left again before clicking on the turn signal and turning slowly off the road. A faded gas station sign stood out a couple yards away, but Nick couldn't make out the words on it.

Kyle brought the shuttle to a stop beneath the eaves, next to the pumps, and turned off the engine.

"It's going to get real cold again in here pretty quick," he warned, shoving the keys in his pocket and climbing out of his seat. "You might want to hang out next to the space heater."

Nick wrestled his complaining body up out of the passenger seat and followed the other man into the back of the shuttle. Kyle sat down against the stack of cardboard boxes he had, motioning for Nick to do the same.

"Come on, sit down. I'll get you something to sleep on."

Nick carefully sank into a cross-legged position on the shuttle's rough carpet. Rob settled behind him, shoulder pressing against Nick's lower back. He reached around and patted the dog on the head.

Kyle brought out an electric lantern, turning it on and filling the space with a fragile yellow light. With a small smile, he turned back and began shuffling through the supplies in the back of the shuttle. There was a small, upright heater propped up against some of the boxes that looked much like an oscillating fan. Nick leaned a little closer to it, reflexively checking if there was any warmth to be had, but it was turned off.

"Here we go." Kyle came back and sat down, handing over a waterproof sleeping bag.

Nick took it and turned it over, surprised at how clean it was. "Looks new."

"It is. Found it at a Cabela's."

"What's a Cabela's?" he asked idly as he unclipped the cords holding the bedding shut.

"Sporting goods store. Never seen one?"

"I haven't." Nick gently unrolled the sleeping bag onto the floor of the shuttle. It was plump and soft — likely filled with down or something similar. He scooted until he was sitting on it and was immediately grateful that it had been given to him. "Thanks," he said, meeting the other man's eyes.

Kyle gave him a huge grin that reminded him, painfully, of Terrence. "No problem. Wasn't using it anyways." He started to dig into another box, not cardboard like the others — instead a large brown crate. He withdrew two large parcels, and, without pause, tossed one of them over to Nick.

He knew what it was before he fumbled to catch it — a medium-sized package wrapped in thick brown plastic. The large black letters 'MRE' were stamped across the front. His stomach seemed to instantaneously develop a mind of its own and tell him, loudly, that he was very, _very _hungry. Nick tore the MRE open, nearly spilling the contents all over the floor. He grabbed the first thing his fingers touched and didn't even bother to read the entire label before tearing apart the foil. Crackers, it had said. Some kind of crackers.

It didn't matter. They were gone in minutes, and he couldn't make out any taste besides salt.

Across from him, Kyle let out a soft, awkward laugh. "You might want to slow down a little." He was taking the things out of his pack one at a time. He hadn't even started eating yet. "I don't want you to get sick."

"I'll be fine," Nick mumbled, grabbing the next one. It was some kind of bread or something; he split it in half and gave part to Rob. The dog nearly bit him in his wild snapping for the food, but he'd been expecting it this time, and was able to jerk his hand away before they got caught in Rob's teeth.

"Is he always like that?" Kyle asked, finally selecting a packet and tearing it open.

"No. He's... he's just hungry." Who could blame him? Nick was acting in nearly the same way. His hands shook as he picked up another packet. He felt like a drug addict as he started to dig into it, something with noodles and sauce that he ate cold.

Kyle ate his slowly, taking small bites one at a time. He stared out at the dark beyond the window, chewing silently. Nick watched him as he sifted his spoon daintily through the plastic packet. It looked like he was picking out certain things to eat and leaving the rest behind.

After a small bag of peanuts, Nick felt his stomach beginning to cramp, even though it felt like he'd barely eaten anything. He set the empty plastic wrappers aside and hunched over himself slightly. For a few seconds, he became terrified that he was going to puke everything back up again.

Kyle swallowed before speaking. "You ate too fast."

"I know," he mumbled in reply. He swallowed back sudden bile coating his tongue and sighed through his nose. "I was hungry."

"I don't blame you. Looks like you haven't had a decent meal in months."

"I don't know anyone who _has_," Nick said, wrapping his arms around his stomach. "Where'd you find all those, anyway?" He nodded to the crate of MREs. "I haven't been able to find shit out there."

Kyle glanced back to the crate, and shrugged. "Abandoned military base. There was all kinds of stuff. Lots of zombies, too." He turned away again and went digging into a suitcase. Nick saw the dull gleam of metal before Kyle pulled out a thick, folded blanket, draping it over his knees as he climbed up onto his cot. "I'm tired," he said factually, as if talking about the weather. He took off his boots and set them neatly at the end of the cot.

Nick glanced behind him to the still-lit dashboard. The clock read ten-thirty. "It's late," he agreed. The sleeping bag was getting more and more tempting with each passing moment. Nick took his boots and jacket off, then slipped the revolver he was keeping at the small of his back into his bag.

Kyle stretched out on the cot, throwing the blanket over himself. "You should go to sleep. Another long day tomorrow, you know." He reached over and turned the lamp down, then rolled until he was facing away from them, and didn't say anything else.

Rob came over and turned a circle on the sleeping bag before lying down with a huff. Nick wiggled his way inside, curling up and pillowing his head on his arm. Rob set his head on his knee.

He did not think he would sleep, not with someone he barely knew right next to him, but with the feeling of food heavy in his stomach and the gathering warmth inside the bedding, he couldn't fight it off for long. He stared at the dashboard light for a few minutes, and that was that.

* * *

A noise woke him, and he shot upright, looking around. Sunlight was beating against the tinted windows of the shuttle. Kyle was in the driver's seat, fiddling with the heater vents. A few seconds passed where Nick's mind sluggishly regathered its memories, and then he sighed and relaxed. It hadn't been anything but the shuttle's engine coming on.

"Your dog tried to eat me again," Kyle said. His voice felt too loud, too grating. Nick wasn't sure yet if Kyle was annoying, or if it had just been too long since he'd been around another person. "Hey. You listening?"

"Yeah." Nick pushed the sleeping bag off of himself and stretched his arms gingerly. "...What?"

"Your dog, man." Kyle turned in the seat to look at him. Rob lay at Nick's feet, tail wagging. "I was trying to get around you and it came after me."

"I'm sorry. I thought he would be all right."

"Well, it wasn't. Seriously. I don't want to leave it behind, but I can't have it trying to bite me every time I want to walk around."

Nick paused in the middle of rubbing his eyes and reached down to pat Rob on the head. "You asshole," he mumbled. The dog's tail wagged faster. Nick got to his feet slowly, bones popping in protest. He bent his head a little so he didn't hit it on the roof of the shuttle and made his way back to the passenger seat.

Kyle glanced at him as he sat down. "So, what do you want to do?"

"About what?" Nick asked, pulling his boots on.

"The dog. What do you want to do with it?"

He shook his head and started lacing his boots. "I'm not gonna dump Rob anywhere." The thought of leaving his dog behind after all this time made his blood run cold. "He'll be fine. I'll watch him more closely from now on."

"I'm not going to turn my back on it," Kyle said. "I don't know how you can."

"He just isn't used to you yet," Nick murmured quietly. In the back of his mind, he wondered if there really was something wrong with his dog. Rob had never growled or snapped at anyone before, not even all the way back in the D.C. subway with Gregory.

The other man let out a loud sigh. "All right, whatever. But if it bites me, we gotta get rid of it."

"...Fine. Okay."

Outside, the snow had stopped falling. The sky was bright and hazy, and the sun glittered on the top of the flat expanse of snow stretching out on either side of the slithering, never-ending road. There were a few buildings that Nick could see far-off, but he wasn't sure what they could be. "Are we close to town?" he asked, pulling his map out of its usual spot in his back pocket.

Kyle nodded. "Uh-huh. We're gonna go up I-7 for a while." He started fishing around in a bag sitting between the front seats and pulled out his own map. It was a lot more detailed than Nick's was; every little road and town was marked. He passed it over. "It'll take a few days, so... get comfortable."

Nick unfolded the map. There were notes everywhere, little markings drawn in with red pen that didn't make sense. He saw Eight Springs in south Pennsylvania, marked with a circle and a check mark. Nick looked for similar markings and found a few more in South Carolina and Ohio. "Have you been to these places?" he asked, pointing them out.

"Yep. Safe zones. That one in Ohio, outside Cambridge — they're in good shape. If we weren't so close to Maine, I'd take you there instead."

"I don't want to go to Cambridge," Nick said, unfolding the map so he could take a look at the midwest. More safe zones, four or five of them. "How do you know about all these?"

"Hearsay, mostly. Didn't know there was anything in Maine 'till you came along."

"Why drive around all over the place? You could have stayed at any of them."

Kyle was quiet for a few moments. "I don't know. I guess I like traveling."

"It's a little hard now, isn't it?" Nick kept unfolding until the entire east coast was hanging down between the passenger seat and the door. "You'd think driving around would be more trouble than it's worth."

The other man didn't say anything else, until Nick looked up at him; then he shrugged and smiled. "I like to drive," he said.

"...Fair enough." Nick wasn't sure why anyone would _want_ to do something like that, knowing how difficult it had been for him with his little Chevy. Even harder had been the Hummer back in Washington. Then again, he supposed anything was better than walking.

He straightened out the last bit of the map. The west coast stretched out in front of him, covered in black 'X's and pencil shading. A line had been drawn down the middle of Nevada that went all the way up to Canada. There were some small arrows pointing westward. Nick ran his finger over the line. "...What does this mean?"

The other man glanced over to him and down to the map. He pressed his lips together and his entire face seemed to harden. "Look, I... don't even know if that's right or not," he spoke softly. "It's just conjecture."

"_Conjecture_? About what, exactly?"

Kyle leaned back in the seat, twisting his hands on the steering wheel. "I don't know. Someone in Cambridge told me that California was bombed." He kept his eyes out the window. "California and Nevada."

"Bombed by who?"

"I don't know!" Kyle let out a breath. "I haven't been there myself. Really, I don't even want to." He glanced at the map again. "Just fold it back up. Don't worry about it."

Nick stared at the dark pencil shading, feeling as if his heart had burrowed down into his stomach. Seeing an entire chunk of the country blacked out — as if it were the hall of a house that an architect had decided was no longer necessary — made his stomach turn over in a way he hadn't felt before in his life. He wasn't sure what was bothering him the most; the fear, or anger, or the fact that he _wasn't surprised at all_ that bombs had been used to try and clean up the mess.

"How come all these other states are colored in, too?" The pencil went much further than just Nevada and California. It was damn-near almost the entire western half of the country.

Kyle looked at him, then leaned toward him and folded the map over. "That's supposed to be radiation." He grabbed the map off of Nick's lap and shoved it between his seat and the door. "It's conjecture," he repeated. "Don't _worry about it_."

His mind slowly milled over the word _radiation_ until it finally made a connection, and the mixed feeling in his gut suddenly turned hot with simultaneous terror and hatred. "Jesus Christ," he whispered. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Do it _outside_," Kyle shouted. "Don't puke in here!"

Nick pushed the passenger door open. The chill of the world outside was magnified by a sharp, icy wind that cut through him. He dropped down into the powdery snow, grasping at the shuttle door to keep himself upright. A gag forced its way out of his mouth, and then a cough. It sent a burning stab of pain through him that knocked the breath from his lungs and he swallowed, hugging himself tightly. Suddenly he was a lot more concerned with needing air instead of the nausea.

"You okay?" he heard Kyle ask from behind him.

"I'm fine," Nick answered. "Out of breath."

"But you haven't done anything."

"I know." He took in a long, shallow breath as slowly as he could. His throat tickled and he felt his eyes tearing up as his body tried to cough again. He stared out at the field beyond where the shuttle had been parked, watching the pine trees sway in the wind. A thought rose up in his mind that he could no longer force back.

_We are fucked._

That was it. There was nothing left anymore; nothing to give and nothing to receive. It was over. Nick dragged a hand through his hair and took measured breaths. It had been over for weeks. It had been over since Eight Springs. The morning he left, he might as well have loaded that revolver and turned it on himself.

"Hey, buddy?" Kyle's voice brought him out of his own roiling mind. "Why don't you come back in? You're letting all the heat out."

Nick watched the sunlight glitter on the snow. The pain in his chest slowly began to diminish. He unwrapped his arm from his side and turned back toward the shuttle, climbing in and carefully settling himself back in the seat.

Kyle gave him a wary smile. "Are you going to be all right?"

He couldn't come up with a truthful answer, so he said nothing. Nick shut the door, and buried his face in his hands. The shuttle heaved to life as Kyle shifted it into gear and pulled back onto the road.

* * *

They drove for a few hours in complete silence. Neither of them instigated conversation. Nick stared out the window at the landscape passing by. A light fog had settled down around them, obscuring the far-off cities and towns that would never be visited again. For a while, Nick simply listened to the shuttle's engine, and imagined he could hear the snow crunching underneath the tires as they chewed up the distance between him and Maine.

Kyle spoke up suddenly. His voice always seemed to be at the same obnoxious volume despite the silence that had formed between them. It made Nick flinch, but the other man didn't notice.

"We're gonna pass into town pretty soon," he said. "I want to stop and take a look at a few places today." He spoke as if he were shopping for a new house or car, like the outcome really didn't matter. "I hope there's a Home Depot."

Nick looked out the window. He could see the foothills of some mountains to his right, just barely breaching the blanket of fog. To his left, the snowy fields stretched out and away, fading into nothing. He wondered how large of a town was hiding there, and also what else they could run into. There hadn't been any zombies for miles, not since the Charger back in Pennsylvania. Nick wondered if it really was for the best that he was heading for cold climates.

"I need more gas, too," Kyle continued. He clicked the turn signal and pulled to the right, off of the main highway. This road led down into the fields. The fog opened up before them as they passed through. "It shouldn't take too long."

"Have you been here before?" Nick asked. "Looks like you know the area pretty well."

At length, Kyle mumbled, "A few times," and didn't say anything else.

The road dipped down and then rose up, and the shuttle's engine hummed as it powered against the snowy incline. Nick stared forward and saw the road falling away at either side of them. The crisscrossing beams of a truss bridge broke out of the fog and loomed over them, dark and silent, the stained bones of the civilization that once stood there.

Nick looked up at the steel girders as they passed silently overhead. He couldn't hear anything but the shuttle's engine, but his memory replayed the mournful creaking of the table bridge in New Orleans, and he couldn't stop himself from trembling. The water of the river below was frothy and white, clawing at the shoreline as it rushed by. His heart twisted in fear. What if the bridge gave way? What if they went into the river?

But the shuttle jolted as it came over the lip at the end of the bridge, and then it continued easily down the road. Nick looked behind them at the trusses fading back into the fog and let out a shaking breath. "Fuck, I hate bridges," he muttered, wiping his mouth.

"Really? I kind of like them," Kyle said, either ignorant or uncaring of Nick's terror. "Beats going around or through, don't you think?"

"I'd rather not deal with them at all."

The other man shrugged and slowed to a stop at an intersection. There were two sedans here, long-abandoned, that had crashed into each other — probably near the very start of the Infection. One body was still draped over a mangled hood, covered in a light dusting of snow, broken and forgotten.

To Nick's astonishment, Kyle put the shuttle into park and climbed out, shoving his hands in his coat pockets as he went to investigate. Nick watched him walk around the crash and peer inside the ruined vehicles. At the sedan closest to them, he stopped and fished around underneath the steering wheel, popping open the trunk.

Kyle came back with a tire iron under one arm and a backpack slung over his shoulder, looking pleased with himself as he settled back down in the driver's seat.

"See that, Nick? Untouched. You gotta keep an eye open for stuff like that. Locked trunks, you know. Never know what you might find."

"What _did_ you find?"

Kyle set the tire iron down between the seats and unzipped the backpack. "Not much. Just some clothes. Someone packed this in a hurry." He took a pair of ratty jeans and an orange sweater out and tossed them in the back. There were a couple of things inside that Nick had to pause for a moment to identify — a cellphone charger and an MP3 player — but it was mostly basic essentials. Soap, shampoo, some random medications.

"Oh, _awesome_," Kyle cried, shoving his hand into the backpack and withdrawing a small paper box — a pack of cigarettes. He let out a long sigh. "I've been jonesing for _days_." Putting the backpack aside, he pushed in the dashboard lighter next to the ashtray, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth as he waited for it to heat up. "You want one?" he offered the pack out to Nick.

"No... I don't smoke."

"Good for you, man. They're terrible for your health, you know."

The lighter _clicked_ as it finished warming itself, and Kyle lit the cigarette up, sighing contentedly as he breathed out the first puff.

Nick felt his throat tickling again and turned his face away from the other man, trying not to cough. The cab filled with thin, bitter smoke as Kyle put it back into drive and started off again down the road.

"Phew. I thought I was going to die before I found some more smokes," Kyle said, flicking into the ashtray. "Thank God."

Nick started coughing into his arm. For the first few seconds, there wasn't much pain, and he thought he would be all right, but then it started to feel like he was being stabbed. He breathed in through his sleeve, trying to filter the air and get the coughing under control.

"Now _that _doesn't sound very good," Kyle said, voice lax. "You don't have the flu or anything, do you?"

Nick gave him the strongest glare he could muster. It wasn't much. "I'm not contagious," he spoke, swallowing. "The smoke's bothering me."

"Mm," Kyle hummed, letting the cigarette hang in his lips as he shifted the shuttle back into drive and started off again. As if in afterthought, he cracked the driver's side window. It did little to dispel the smoke.

"Could you stop, maybe?" Nick asked, trying to hug his ribs and cover his mouth at the same time.

"I'll be done in a minute," the other man said, taking another long drag. He blew it out over the dashboard, and it curled and spread across the windshield. "What's the issue? Cancer?"

"_What?_ I don't have cancer. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Kyle sniffed, looking rather offended. "I'm just wondering, man. No need to get snappy."

"A fucking Tank... broke three of my ribs... then I got pneumonia from walking through a snowstorm," Nick managed to snarl, despite the overwhelming urge to open the door and run to fresh air. "What the fuck do you _think_ is making me cough?"

"Well, _I_ didn't know that!" Kyle threw up a hand in aggravation. "I'm not psychic, man. Calm down. It's just a cigarette." He continued to smoke, although perhaps a little faster than he had been, and eventually stubbed it out in the ashtray.

Nick breathed slowly through his nose and prayed for the air to clear faster. He tried to fight back his irritation, reminding himself that if he pissed Kyle off, he could very well end up walking again. The revolver was in his bag — where he'd put it the night before when he'd gone to sleep. His last resort. If the other man tried to get rid of him, he'd have to get to it very fast, he thought.

Kyle rolled the window back up and cleared his throat. "How about you tell me next time what the problem is? I don't know anything about you, buddy. Except you're apparently a... wound magnet," he finished, giving Nick a pointed glance-over. "Don't you know how to hide?"

"Apparently it's not one of my strong points." The worst ones had come from him trying to protect someone else. He wondered if it were some sort of sign to tell him to revert back to the man he once was. His past life had certainly involved a lot less pain and misery. "Do you?"

"What, know how to hide?" Kyle scoffed and offered a slight smirk. "Of course. It's why I'm still in one piece. I'm not stupid." He paused, seemed to think for a moment, and continued. "...Not that I think _you're _stupid." His voice had not yet sounded so impersonal.

Nick could not think of a reply that wouldn't piss Kyle off, so he didn't say anything. The other man didn't talk either, so they sat in silence again as the shuttle rumbled down the road.

They came down through a street with squat buildings cramped together on either side. There wasn't a single unbroken window or a door that wasn't open, hanging off its hinges, or missing. One tall brick building declared itself as a pawn shop; the letterboard sign near the roof was missing letters, and spelled only 'VACUAT'. Nick looked up and saw the tattered remains of an American flag hanging upside-down at the top of its pole nearby.

Kyle slowed the shuttle a bit and leaned over to peer closer at the shop. "Looks like it's been cleared out already." He sighed and glanced around the street. "Probably nothing here but bodies." The vehicle slid a little in the snow as he stopped. "I'm not sure what use we'd get out of pawned jewelry and DVDs."

"Pawn shops sell guns," Nick pointed out.

"Hm." Kyle shifted the shuttle into park and shrugged. "Worth a look." He reached down between his seat and the door, withdrawing a shotgun that was sawed-off and duct taped at the grip. "Get your gun. Let's go hunting."

As the other man climbed out into the street, Nick went to retrieve his rifle. He crouched down and got his revolver from his bag, shoving it under his belt at the small of his back. The barrel was freezing cold against his skin. He ignored it and hurried to follow Kyle outside, not wanting him to get suspicious. Rob hopped out after him and immediately charged out into the street, nose down and tail up.

Nick shouldered the Steyr and looked up at the colorless sky. There were no discernible clouds, just a single flat shade of gray that stretched above them from horizon to horizon.

Kyle came up and stopped beside him. "Where'd you get that rifle?"

"Washington, D.C.," Nick answered.

"Scavenged?"

"Yeah."

"Lucky." Kyle waved the shotgun in the air. "I've had this old thing for months. Found it on a dead guy." He checked the shotgun's breech and then glanced at the Steyr again. "Can't imagine using something like that. Long-range, you know."

Nick started off slowly toward the pawn shop, trying to keep Kyle in the corner of his eye. "I'd rather kill them _before_ they get close." He imagined it wouldn't make much difference now, not with Chargers that made him deaf and Tanks that could flip freight trains.

"Yeah, well." Kyle cleared his throat. "This'll get a little one off of me. That's all I really need."

"We run into a Tank, we're gonna be pretty much fucked."

"Hm. Those are the big ones, right? What kind of gun _is_ going to do you much good against one of those?" He paused to kick at a lumpy form on the ground. It was a dead, frozen body; nothing of use. He turned back around. "What's the biggest thing you've taken down with that rifle?" he asked.

Nick felt a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. "A Tank."

The other man's eyebrows raised. For a second, there was a stunned look on his face, and then it splintered apart as he grinned that wide grin. It was neither condescending or complimentary. "Well, Nick. You're a tough old bastard, aren't you?"

"I'm thirty-five," he mumbled, watching as Rob sniffed around the outside wall of the pawn shop. "...Thirty-six now, I guess." The three steps leading up to the entrance were clean and untouched. The door was hanging crooked off its hinges.

He watched Kyle push at it gently with his foot a few times before rocking back and kicking it. The damaged, frozen hinges broke, and the particleboard made a _snap_ noise as it fell onto the filthy linoleum.

The noise made Nick flinch, but he still followed. While staring at the back of Kyle's head, he began to think of the revolver again. How easy it would be. Hell, he wouldn't even _need_ the revolver; there was more than enough firepower already hanging heavy in his hands.

The hardwood floor felt uneven and creaked as he walked across it. Nick turned on his flashlight, making sure the safety catch was in place before directing the barrel of the gun around. A long streak of brown was smeared from the doorway to the counters on the other side of the building. The glass display cases had been smashed open, most of the items taken. He wandered to the left, peering into them. Electronics and jewelry.

For a split-second, he thought of gathering up all of the necklaces and precious stones and shoving them in his pocket. It was a reflex from long ago that he didn't realize he still had. He stood there for a few moments, staring at the jewelry, feeling the urge to _take, take, take_ slowly fade away.

"I wonder if any of these cameras still work," Kyle spoke in his loud voice from across the room, making Nick jump. Words were too hard to get used to anymore; the volume was a shock to his senses. He wished the man would learn how to whisper.

"Probably not," he murmured, hoping that Kyle would take the hint at his quietness and lower his voice accordingly. He lifted the flashlight and swept it across the walls. There were a lot of bullet holes, many of them all in a straight line, as if a machine gun had swung wild from recoil.

There came the clicking of nails behind him as Rob trotted inside the pawn shop. He sniffed around at the bottom of a few display cases before ambling over and pushing his nose against Nick's hand.

"I'm going to check the back room," Kyle said.

"Uh-huh," Nick grunted. He lingered at the display cases, searching through the shelves for anything that might have been left behind. Many of the electronics were untouched, covered in grime and dust. He picked up a camera and brushed away the filth from the lens, turning it over in his hands. It wouldn't turn on. He placed it carefully back onto the shelf and straightened up.

Rob stood next to him, tail waving slowly back and forth, tilting his head at the noises of Kyle rummaging in the other room.

Nick stepped behind the counters, edging around a corpse lying twisted on the floor. It was badly decomposed, eyes sunken away and exposed teeth gleaming pale in the flashlight's beam. He stared at the face for a while, his brain conjuring up images of who the body could have been. He saw Rochelle but thought, '_her skin is much darker'._ He saw Coach but thought, '_definitely too small to be him.'_ He saw Ellis; '_there's no tattoo.'_ He saw Terrence... and had to look away. A long, carefully gentle sigh blew through his nose as he rubbed his forehead.

"There's a bunch of boxes back here," Kyle called out from the back, his voice muffled by the walls. "Come over here and help me look through them."

Nick pushed a hand through his hair and went toward the back room. There were electronic parts and jewelry all over the floor. A ukulele bridge cracked under his boot. He edged it out of his path.

Kyle was crouched down, pawing through a box. There were books and DVDs spread all over the ground. His shotgun leaned against a nearby table. He looked up as Nick entered and motioned to a stack of cardboard boxes against the wall. "Here. Look through these. See if we can't find anything to use."

"It just looks like a bunch of junk," Nick mumbled, setting his rifle on the top of one stack so the flashlight would illuminate what he was looking through. The first box was full of tangled electrical cords and surge protectors. The second, with 'SAVE' written on it with black marker, contained a few packages of cheap kitchen utensils. Near the bottom of the box, he found a pocketknife. He clicked it open and tilted the blade in the light.

"What do you have there?" Kyle asked, pushing his box aside to lean closer and look at what Nick had.

"Just a knife. Probably a cheap Chinese piece of shit."

"Let me see it."

He didn't much want him to, but Nick held it out and watched as Kyle opened it and closed it a few times before stuffing it in his back pocket. "Cool," he said, then turned back to his box and resumed his search.

Nick opened his mouth with a curse word on his tongue but didn't say anything. What he managed was a glare that went unnoticed as Kyle overturned his box to the floor, sifted through the crap, and then pushed it all aside to go through another one.

Rob grunted softly as he lay down in the hallway outside the door, watching the two of them as they continued to search.

There wasn't much to find. Kyle found a few packages of batteries and some clothing, and stuffed them all into a plastic trash bag to carry back to the shuttle. The wind was starting to strengthen again outside, and clouds were beginning to clump up, breaking apart the flat gray expanse of sky. Nick shouldered his rifle and hunched into his clothes as he descended the pawn shop stairs. His eyes watered; he turned his face away from the wind and made his way back to the shuttle. It was much warmer inside, despite the fact that the engine was off.

Kyle was sorting his found goods carefully into the cardboard boxes stacked up in the back. Rob jumped in behind him and sniffed at the man's boots for a second before turning and squeezing back up front with Nick.

"Looks like this area's already been searched," Kyle said as he moved back up front. "I wanna drive around a bit more... still a couple hours of daylight left. There's gotta be a Home Depot around here, you think?"

"Yeah, probably," Nick agreed weakly. He stared at the blank street ahead of them and sighed.

"Let's go, then."

* * *

They rumbled down the road in stuffy, uncomfortable silence. Nick stared out the window at the impending sunset, eye flicking over the shadows of cars and buildings as they stretched across the snow in dark, parallel lines. Hugging himself, he sat and relished the heat coming off from the dashboard. He breathed through his nose, measuring how much air he could take in before it started to hurt. More than before, at least. That much was a blessing.

Kyle drove until dark, out of the small town and down the highway. Nick watched the landscape roll by, mostly fields and clumps of trees. There were a few cities that he could see far-off, but they may as well have just been pictures, or illusions. He knew he was never going to see them up-close, and it was likely that nobody ever would again. He imagined what the west coast must look like, compared to the clean white snow and mostly intact buildings. His mind kept trying to tell him, _That's not what happened, it's just conjecture, there is no way that it has come to this_, but the more he thought about it, the more he believed it was true.

The wind never stopped shrieking. It tossed the trees around each other and blew snow up over the roads into huge drifts. The shuttle's engine and tires whined as they powered through the deeper parts, at times spinning pointlessly when Kyle took a wrong turn and got them stuck. They hadn't had to shovel the shuttle out yet, and for that Nick was grateful, though he did notice that Kyle kept a few digging tools in the back.

He got to return to his favorite activity yet — siphoning gasoline. Nick had gotten pretty good at it. They split up and drained cars on either side of the road. Kyle wordlessly took what Nick had collected and consolidated it with his own. He had a couple of barrels in the back with his cardboard boxes. Nick didn't want to ask how much was actually in them. He was afraid of the answer he'd get.

When they stopped for the night, it was a few hours after dark, and Nick couldn't stand to be outside for more than a few minutes. Rob dashed off and went about urinating on everything he could find, but Nick withdrew back into the shuttle and huddled into his bedroll instead.

Kyle wasn't talking much. He handed over an MRE, silently ate his own, and then settled down to sleep. Nick let Rob back in and curled up in his bedroll, listening to the other man and the dog breathing in the dark. It was too cold for him to sleep, despite the food in his stomach. He watched the minutes tick past on the dashboard clock, and sometime between midnight and two, he lost track.

When he opened his eyes again it was six-thirty, and it was not as dark outside. Kyle was still on his cot. Rob was pressed against his back. He could feel the dog's fur brushing against the back of his neck.

Nick looked around for a minute before sitting up, holding the blanket close to himself. He moved around until he was sitting against the back of the passenger seat. Rob grumbled at being interrupted, but still got up and hobbled stiffly over so he could lay down next to his owner again.

"Yeah, I feel you," Nick breathed, brushing his fingers through the dog's tangled fur. "Everything hurts now." He opened a bag of freeze-dried granola that had come with his MRE last night and nibbled on it a piece at a time, staring blearily out the shuttle's back window and yawning.

He couldn't figure out how Kyle slept so deeply for so long. It was unnerving and it made Nick envious. All he could do was sit and wait, watching out the window as the sky slowly brightened. He pulled his rifle into his lap, fiddling with the braided strap Isaac had made for him. Nick had never looked at it closely until now. It had gotten frayed, and the threads' bright colors had begun to fade away. He reached down and looked at Rob's collar. It was filthy and he couldn't tell what color it was supposed to be anymore.

Nick sighed, tugging his legs up to his chest. _Shouldn't have left._

_Should have waited._

His eyes were itchy and felt heavy. He rubbed harshly at them.

And then, low hum built up outside. Nick paid no attention for a few minutes, believing it to be the wind. Then, it began to get louder and deeper. He lifted his head while his insides twisted coldly below his sternum. Next to him, Rob did the same, letting out a low, _whuff_ing bark.

Nick crawled the rest of the way out of the relative warmth of the sleeping bag, shoving his hair out of his face and fumbling for his boots. As he clumsily tied the laces, the noise got louder, a roar that must have been coming from a distance. It sounded like a low buzz. He rocked to his feet and opened the sliding shuttle door. The icy air made him gasp; for a second it felt like he'd just jumped in a freezing lake.

But that wasn't what was important. Nick forged off to the front of the shuttle, listening for the sound. Everything seemed highlighted by the piercing light of the sun hanging just above the treeline. It glittered on the smooth, untouched snow and outlined the boughs and needles of the trees with an icy white light. Nick let out a long breath and watched it puff in the air like cigarette smoke. He could hear the sound much better now, but it wasn't a vehicle on the road, or a nearby zombie — it was in the air.

It was a plane. A plane, in the sky. Flying.

The first two things that whipped across his mind were the words _conjecture_ and _radiation_. He backed up unconsciously, to the passenger side of the shuttle, keeping his gaze to the sky. It was too hazy; he couldn't see it, wherever it was. Rob trotted up and stood staunchly next to him, staring out at the road as if he believed that was where the noise was coming from.

"It's the military."

It was Kyle, his voice loud and sudden as it always was.

Nick failed to conceal his flinch of surprise. "What?"

The other man stepped up next to him. "Probably a cargo plane, restocking a base somewhere nearby." He crossed his arms and shook his head. "They've got to be close. There's no fuel around to get them very far these days."

"I thought they abandoned the mainland," Nick said, unable to stop his hands from shaking.

"They're still around," Kyle told him. He lit a cigarette. "I've seen a couple of militarized zones. South Ohio, outside of Frankfort."

"They were in Washington, too. D.C.," he shook his head. "Killing anything that wasn't one of them. Carriers. Us."

Kyle shrugged. "Well. ...Nobody wants to die," he muttered simply, before turning back to the shuttle. He flicked the cigarette into the snow. "We should get back in. I don't want them to see us and get bombed or something."

Inside, the air seemed to press on him from all sides. Kyle reclined against his cot, looking well-rested but impatient about the whole thing. Nick sat again with his back against the passenger seat, hands folded together tightly. He stared at the defroster's lines in the back window, not really seeing them. The plane's roar became louder and louder, until he was sure the damn thing was going to land right on top of the car. Nick threaded Rob's collar through his fingers, wondering if the plane would realize that the shuttle had occupants and attack.

But the deafening, rattling noise continued on, passing slowly over them. Its sound rumbled louder than any thunder he'd ever heard in his life, even as it faded and drew away. Eventually, he was able to hear the wild beat of his own heart instead of the plane's engine, and he sighed, dropping his head into his hands.

"Jesus," he breathed.

"What're you nervous about?" Kyle's voice was unchanged. Confident. "They weren't gonna do anything to us even if they _did_ know we were down here."

Nick lifted his head, glaring. "I was in New Orleans when they started carpet-bombing." He folded his hands and pressed them against his lips. The memory of New Orleans was not the most terrifying; no, that prize went to the ship, and that steel-gray morning of freezing water and shrieking jet engines. "They had a cruise ship... they were still trying to make a damn cure out there. Ended up bombing that, too."

Kyle's eyebrows raised. The movement was nearly undetectable. "How do you know about it?"

"I was _on_ it," Nick said. "I was floating in the damn ocean when they blew the thing to Hell."

The other man's voice sounded skeptical. "How'd you manage to live through that?"

"I'm just _that_ fucking lucky. Do you think I'm lying?"

Kyle shrugged. "No, not really. Why'd they bomb it?"

"Zombies." Nick pressed his palms to his eyes. "They were trying to make a cure. A vaccine. They took blood from all of us. Someone must've fucked up and contaminated the whole ship. Next thing I know, the whole place is full of those goddamn monsters."

"What do you mean by 'all of us'?"

"My fr—..." He paused and shoved a hand through his hair. "Just... some people I know. Traveled with them down to the 'evac in New Orleans."

"Are they the ones in Maine, Nick?"

"...Yes."

Kyle smirked. It did not reach his eyes. For a moment, he tilted his head a little to one side, listening for the plane. It was silent. "...I think we should keep moving. Last thing we want is to get caged in with those lunatics."

Nick thought back to D.C., and shivered.

* * *

_(A/N: Where the hell did those eight months go?_

_Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Blue Virtue, and thanks to everyone still reading for their incredible patience. I don't deserve you guys.  
_

_Up next: The Quarry._

_Edit 4-9-12; changed next chapter name.)  
_


	33. The Quarry

They kept driving slowly up through the eastern half of New York, past mirage-like cities and sluggish little rivers. The roads were quiet; the buildings were empty. No matter where they stopped, there were no supplies to be taken. Nick did not count the little things, like matches and toilet paper, which Kyle continued to collect up and store away in the back of his shuttle.

After a few more days, Rob stopped trying to bite him. He still would not approach the man without being called, and shied away if he came too close too fast, but it was something to give Nick a little hope.

But Nick's cough did not abate. At first he had thought that it had only been caused by Kyle's smoking, but even in the absence of cigarette smoke it was still constantly tickling the back of his throat. He suppressed them as much as he could. The pain was getting worse and worse, and on about the sixth night he'd spent with Kyle, the coughing woke him up. He hunched over his legs, gripping his sides as if they would explode without his hands on them. The cough had gone from dry and raspy to wet and hacking, and the pain was quickly becoming a white-hot blaze in his brain that just kept flaring brighter and brighter with every second.

Rob inched closer to him in the dark, his soft whine becoming audible in the relative quiet between the horrible noises Nick was making. He licked the back of Nick's closest hand which tried to wave him off, but he only scooted closer and laid his head on his leg. Nick dug his fingers into the dog's fur, trying to focus on anything but the pain and the overwhelming urge to keep coughing.

"Jeez," Kyle's surprised voice spoke, on the other side of the shuttle. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah— I—" Nick could barely get words out. A sweet, coppery taste began to creep over his tongue. He spit it out into his hand, and on his shivering fingers in the sickly green light of the shuttle's console, he saw something slimy and dark. "Fuck," he groaned. "This isn't fucking good."

"You need some cough drops or something." Kyle's voice was low and sluggish. "Do you have anything like that?"

"I don't—" the cough wouldn't stop interrupting him, "—know. Maybe. I need to— to check."

The battery lamp at the foot of Kyle's cot flickered back to life. The driver was sitting up on his bed, rubbing his face and shoving his hands through his hair. He seemed to finally notice the time on the dashboard. "Hell's bells, Nick. It's only one-thirty."

"Sorry." _I'll be sure to schedule my body's falling apart around your need to sleep next time, asshole._ He only wanted to stop coughing, that was all. He could go the rest of the night without sleep or the next day without food, but he couldn't stand another minute with the pain. It tore at his thoughts like a wild animal. "Jesus Christ."

Kyle began shuffling around in his box collection. He brought out a fishing tackle box and started sifting through it. Nick saw a bunch of assorted bandages and pill vials, but Kyle handed him a bottle filled with some thick, green liquid. "Here. Take this. It's Nyquil."

"Thank you," Nick rasped. "Thanks." His fingers left red streaks on the cap as he opened it. He drank the stuff straight from the bottle; the taste was awful and made him reflexively shudder. He wasn't sure how much he was supposed to take, and it wasn't nearly light enough for him to read the label to find out, but he knew it wasn't a full bottle. He had to reserve it. He coughed some more, feeling sudden nausea as the taste of blood coated his tongue again.

The fear in him strengthened when he realized that he might be getting pneumonia again. It turned his gut cold while the Nyquil filled him with a false warmth. Anything but that, he thought. Anything. If he spiked another fever like the last one... would Kyle even bother to keep him around? Was there even anything in the other man's stored supplies that could bring him back out of it?

Another few minutes of hacking and wheezing like a Smoker and it finally seemed to subside. Nick hunched into his stomach, panting from lack of air and from the pain. He heard Kyle shifting around on his side of the shuttle.

"You all right, now? Thought I might lose you there for a second."

"Yeah." What a surprise— now he had a sore throat from the coughing. His voice was hoarse and strengthless and Nick felt ashamed of how weak he sounded. "I think I'll be all right."

Kyle sighed, a terse and irritated noise, and then lay back down. "You sound like a zombie," he spoke with an uncharacteristically quiet voice. "You sound like you're dying, man."

"I'm not," Nick growled. "I'm _not_."

Another loud outward breath. "Maybe you should be looking for some medicine or something. Not just Nyquil. Do you have any antibiotics?"

"I don't know. I don't think so." Nick carefully removed his arm from his uninjured side and grabbed for his duffel bag. The medical supplies Sean had given them were still somewhere inside it. He managed to find the small shoebox, held closed with a large rubber band, but it was too dark for him to pick through the contents and find something that would help him. There were definitely pills inside; he had assumed Tylenol or something like that. Knowing Sean, it could very well just be vitamins. Nick put the box back in his bag, deciding to go through it in the morning. The lack of coughing gave him an opportunity to realize how tired he was.

Kyle yawned and turned over. His voice had long stopped sounding concerned. "Switch the lamp off when you're done."

Nick lay back down on the floor and then quickly found himself sitting back up, panting. It was just like in Eight Springs— when he lay down, it felt like something heavy was sitting on his chest and he could barely breathe. Nick sat shivering and staring into the dark, feeling the massive fear building back up in his gut again. He remembered the fever, and how he'd lost track of all those days because of it.

And he knew it would kill him this time. There was no Sean around to care for him and no IV lines to turn his illness around. He dug a hand into his hair and swallowed the whine that was trying to come up out of his throat. No, he couldn't give up now. He'd come too far; he was so close. They would have some way to care for him in Maine. They had to.

They had to.

Nick turned off the lamp like he'd been asked, and moved until he was sitting with his back against the driver's seat. Unzipping his sleeping bag, he gathered it around himself, tucking his face down into it as he awkwardly curled up against the back of the seat and the wall, trying to get comfortable.

_Comfortable,_ he thought angrily. _What a fucking joke._

He hadn't been anywhere near that since Eight Springs— since Elaine. And he'd been uncomfortable for many, many months before her. It just wasn't in his body's vocabulary anymore. Like _depth perception _or _warmth_. He wished he had something to make up for the loss, but all he could really think of was his newfound ability to choke down whatever food he could find.

Nick leaned his head against the wall of the shuttle, tucking his legs closer to himself. His chest throbbed no matter what position he tried to get himself into. The Nyquil burned in his stomach. He swallowed his nausea and fear again, trying to force them down, and out of his thoughts.

Instead, he thought about _them_, and replayed every memory that he could bring to the surface of his mind. The hotel, the mall. The underground river. The amusement park. All of them terrifying, and all of them welcome, if only for the fact that _they_ were in them.

When he finally drifted off, hours later, he dreamed of Rochelle again, of some conversation he'd had with her that he had forgotten— or perhaps it had never really happened. He saw the tiny smile she had that she seemed to save especially for him. He heard her voice but not her words.

Then his dream shifted abruptly. Forward, forward, past the swamp and the hurricane, to the bridge, to the helicopter. To her holding the jacket to his face. Her sobbing. The fear in her eyes that scared him more than the wound had. That awful undulating wail that repeated itself endlessly.

_Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that, Nick, you idiot..._

He'd tried to reply to her but he couldn't, his voice wouldn't work. Rochelle's crying became louder, higher. _Nick_, she shrieked. Her voice became his whole world, and he saw her changing, saw her slender fingers lengthening and eyes growing dim— _Nick!_— before she opened them and they were glowing, reflecting light and yet they were the darkest things he had ever seen— _Nick!— _and her sobbing never stopped. She struck out at him with a wail of anguish—

"Nick. Hey, dude. Wake up."

And, as simple as anything, he was back. Twisted in his sleeping bag, somewhere in New York, wedged against the back of the driver's seat and wall of an airport shuttle. The morning light came in silver-gray beams through the tinted windows. His face was wet and he was breathing hard, but he couldn't tell if it was the fear or if he was unable catch his breath at all anymore. There was the stomach-turning taste of blood in his mouth.

"Jeez." Kyle had been hunched over him, shaking him awake. "You okay?" he asked, although he sounded like he didn't really care to hear the answer.

"I'm fi—" Nick started, and was immediately cut off by coughing.

Kyle shrank back, as if he feared catching the illness. A look of mixed disgust and pity came over his face, and he shook his head. To Nick, it was almost as painful to look at as it was to cough.

He cleared his throat and swallowed, breathing through his nose in short little spurts. Curling up as tightly as he could around his legs seemed to lessen the pain a bit. He stared at the floor of the shuttle, letting his eye wander back and forth between the carpet and the inside handle of the sliding door.

The sound of shuffling came from the other side of the car, and with a bit of effort, he tilted his head to look over. Kyle was digging through the suitcase again, and Nick heard what might be pills rattling in bottles.

"Are you allergic to anything?" Kyle asked, not looking up.

"...No. N-not as far as I know."

"...Okay." He kept picking through it, picking up a few bottles and looking at them before putting them back. There were a few vials of what looked like injections of some kind. "Ah. This might help." Though his voice was just as low and hollow as ever, he brought out a white vial and came over with it. "Amoxicillin. It's an antibiotic. It might help you."

Nick glanced from the bottle to the man's face, thinking for a second that he was joking, but Kyle just held it out to him. He stretched out gingerly and took it. The pills inside were huge, red. Nick poured one into his palm and searched about for a water bottle.

Kyle had one ready for him. "Here. You might want to eat something with it, too. Could make you sick."

He swallowed the pill and suppressed a cough into his sleeve. "Th-thanks. Again." A question passed through his mind and he asked it without thinking. "You know a lot about medicine, huh?"

A blank look crossed Kyle's face, and Nick immediately recognized it as a carefully controlled expression of neutrality— something that he himself had mastered long before the Infection. "Sure, I guess," Kyle said, shrugging and looking away.

Nervousness filtered into Nick's mind past the fear and pain. That was not exactly a look he was happy to see. "I owe you one," he said slowly. "Really."

"Mm," Kyle mumbled, getting to his feet. He went up to the front of the shuttle and sat in the driver's seat, placing the keys in the ignition, but not turning the engine over.

Nick watched him, still not sure if he was ready to get up and be active again. He noticed Rob curled up next to him, head on his paws, watching him attentively. The dog's tail wagged when he looked at him, and if he hadn't been scared of causing himself to cough some more he would have greeted him. He scratched the top of the dog's head instead, and grabbed for the handle of the sliding door to pull himself up.

The engine was rumbling by the time Nick was getting himself into the passenger seat. He coughed a few more times, into his elbow, and swallowed the blood again. Nick glanced outside at the bright, cloudless morning, and then caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror. God, he looked horrible— pale and thin, like a corpse. His face was so sunken and tired that it looked like he had two black eyes. He couldn't look at himself; he turned his eye to the floor instead, concentrating on his boots.

"You ready to get going?" Kyle asked softly. He was looking through a notebook. "Bet we could make some good time today, if we get an early start."

"Whenever you are," Nick murmured, before going back to hug himself again. "Just waiting for these pills to start working."

"Hm. Might take a few days. Try not to run around like crazy."

"I couldn't run if I tried."

The truth in his statement dampened his emotions even more than they already were. How long ago had it been that he was able to sprint and jump around? Less than six months ago, he was running through a swamp, swinging a machete with both hands, lopping off zombie heads left and right. Now, even to a regular zombie, he would not be much of a fair fight.

He wondered how the others were doing. Coach probably looked the exact same. The big guy had a nose for food; he'd probably gathered quite a stash by now, wherever he was. Somehow, he could not imagine them looking any differently. Did they feel the same about him?

Nick scratched his beard. They were in for quite a surprise if— _when_— he found them again.

Kyle drove the shuttle without speaking, through a bare and empty space filled with only sparse trees and more snow, Every once in a while he'd stop, look over his map, write something in his notebook, then start off again.

"Why do you write so much?" Nick asked of him suddenly, later that evening. The cough had been coming and going all day, but now instead of blood he was bringing up some sort of cloudy, foul-tasting substance. He took that as a good sign, as sad as it was.

"I just like to keep tabs on where I'm going," Kyle said. He kept his eyes out the windshield. "Gas mileage, that sort of thing. Gotta make sure I can get somewhere with what I've got left."

"Right." Nick leaned toward the heater vents. "How long 'till Maine, you think?"

Kyle glanced over at him— that strange, empty look again— and then turned his head and concentrated on the road. "I don't know," he said softly. Something about his voice, the tentativeness and tone, and how he didn't make eye contact, made Nick bristle. A different sort of anxious fear simmered in his stomach, not at all what he felt with the cough. He was scared to speak again; scared to read Kyle's body language and find a horrific answer there.

But Nick opened his mouth anyway. "We're still going to Maine... right?"

He watched the driver closely. Kyle leaned back in the seat, sighed quietly, ran his fingers over the steering wheel. Glanced over at him again, but not to his face, rather to something off to the right. "Yeah, Nick. Definitely." _No_, his words instead screamed in Nick's mind, although he couldn't figure out _why_.

Kyle gave him a small smile. His eyes remained dark and hollow.

It was silent for a while. Nick stared out at the road and the flat white fields stretching out in all directions. There was more snow falling a few miles ahead of them, concealing whatever might be out there. Probably another city which he knew would be as empty as all the others.

Then it became dark, and Kyle stopped driving. They shared a meal and settled in for the night. Neither of them spoke. Nick couldn't stop thinking about how Kyle had replied to him. His mind would not stop concentrating on it, as if something in his subconscious was telling him _this is important, pay attention._

But he couldn't. Why would someone who intended to kill him or dump him somewhere supply him with medicine? Kyle was just weird, he finally decided, as he listened to the man snoring on the other end of the shuttle. Just weird. Maybe he had social anxiety. Nick wouldn't ask, and wouldn't guess.

_Because you're wrong_, his mind told him.

He swallowed some Nyquil and fell asleep.

* * *

The next day was just as silent as the last. It had long stopped feeling strange; Nick was getting used to it. He sort of liked the quiet, even though it made the moments where Kyle _did_ decide to talk even more shocking to his ears.

There was thick snowfall drifting down all around them. The sound of the shuttle's windshield wipers flicking back and forth created a strangely relaxing rhythm in Nick's head. He stayed in the passenger seat, Rob's head in his lap, resting. He'd settled on the notion that the antibiotics were working. The cough was much less severe already and the pain was beginning to ebb away.

Nick was nothing but grateful. He might have been dead by that morning if not for the antibiotics.

He kept himself warm by staying in front of the heater and watched the landscape drift past.

And then, that night, everything changed.

The strange anxious fear he had toward Kyle's behavior had begun to wear off. He'd grown accustomed to the stretches of silence, and begun to anticipate the man's loud, sudden voice. Mostly, he kept as quiet and complacent as possible. Anything that brought him closer to his goal. He'd give everything he had just for a few more miles.

Sunset came, a distant golden glow that faded as suddenly as it had appeared. Kyle brought the shuttle over under a copse of trees and parked for the night. He went into the back and Nick followed slowly, settling down onto his bedroll to wait for the evening meal.

Nothing seemed amiss.

It was the biggest misstep that Nick had ever taken.

Kyle silently handed over the chemically-heated lasagna meal, already open and steaming with warmth. Nick accepted it and dug in, as greedily as ever. Once upon a time, he might have noticed the strange, bitter taste that lingered amongst the bland noodles and sauce. Now, he didn't care; his taste buds had no bias. He ate as quickly as he could, every last bit of it. When the plastic was empty, he threw it outside, then sat on his bedroll, dutifully taking his antibiotic.

He didn't notice how closely Kyle was watching him. The man had never been so intent before, as if he expected him to leap up and attack at any second. Nick continued to sit, enjoying the feeling of warm food in his stomach.

He began to feel tired. This wasn't unusual; he tired quite easily these days, and a full stomach would do nothing but compound the feeling. Kyle was picking idly at his meal across from him.

And, far too late, Nick realized something was wrong. He was beginning to feel dizzy, lightheaded. His limbs seemed to be weighed down and the light of the lamp seemed to glow brighter and brighter with every second. He felt like he should be getting up and moving around— and running as fast and far as he could from the shuttle, from Kyle. _Not right_, his mind screamed. _Get up_.

He couldn't. Nick rubbed clumsily at his forehead and felt like everything he looked at was melding together into one long streak of gray and gold. He began to talk, "I feel..." but he couldn't find the next word to say.

Kyle was looking right at him. He'd long ago set his food aside but Nick hadn't noticed. He stood up and moved closer to him, tilting his head, looking unworried.

Nick felt Rob next to him, standing up. Whining.

"No, Rob," he tried to say, but his words slurred into an unintelligible mess.

He watched as Kyle brought out another bit of an MRE, something square. The man opened it and offered it out to the dog. Everything was so distant, like he was watching from a television set.

"You want it, Rob?"

It sounded like he was hearing him through many layers of cloth.

Kyle opened the sliding door of the shuttle. Nick felt Rob stepping over him.

"You want this treat? Go get it, boy!"

Nick heard Rob's nails scratch on the floor of the shuttle. The chill from outside brushed over his face.

Kyle slammed the sliding door shut. His voice became low and acidic. "Stupid fucking dog. Hunger is such a fickle bitch, isn't it?" He turned around.

Nick could barely see him; he sluggishly realized that he was laying on his side now, good eye down against the carpet. Everything shifted and sloughed to one side. He realized Kyle was lifting his head up, grabbing his chin and peering closely at him. Then he could hear the high noise of Rob crying, through the heavy veil of whatever was pressing him to the floor, and the door of the shuttle.

Kyle's movements were sharp and methodical. He snapped a finger in Nick's face. A smile spread over his own. "Hey, buddy. How you feeling?"

To Nick's ears, the snapping sounded like an echoing snare drum, with Rob's strange wheedling cry a discordant back-up. Kyle's face blurred into a strange mesh of yellow and black. He tried to speak, to say anything, but he couldn't figure it out. Something had been disconnected between his brain and mouth. He knew he should be afraid, but he couldn't feel anything but a chilled numbness.

"You might have gotten too much," Kyle said, or Nick thought he said. He could have really been speaking anything, but Nick was unable to filter it properly. "Not as heavy as you look, huh?"

The man let his head drop back to the floor. Nick felt the shuttle's carpet under his cheek. He tried his best just to lift one of his arms, to move _anything at all_, but all that his arm did was fall limply from his side to the floor. He blinked slowly, and the light of the lamp flared in and out of existence, bright as the sun. Nick found himself squinting against it until Kyle came and concealed it with his body again.

"Wow. You are out like a fucking light."

Nick felt his arms being moved behind him. A high-pitched clicking noise reached his ears and banged gently around his muddled head and he tried to figure out what it was but gave up halfway through. His face turned and pressed into the floor and he couldn't see anything.

"I hope you understand, Nick." A loud sigh. "This is all for the best."

He was already beginning to fall slowly headfirst into a deep black pit, but it somehow became darker and larger and then it leapt up with a silent roar and swallowed him whole.

* * *

"Yeah. Sector eight-two-nine."

Sore arms were the first thing Nick became aware of as he slowly came back around to himself. Like someone had been trying to yank them out of their sockets. He felt pressure on his cheek and tried to turn his head but found that he couldn't. There was an awful taste in his mouth. He tried to move his arms out of the cramped position they were in. Nothing.

"I don't know that." Silence. "Male. Thirty-five, thirty-six."

Nick cracked open his eyes. Carpeted floor underneath him, face pressing into it. Still in the shuttle. Kyle's cot was on the other side. The lamp was off. Gentle sunlight was coming in through the windows. He felt the floor rumbling underneath him and shut his eyes, fighting his body's urge to fall back asleep.

"Mm. Not exactly the healthiest I've brought in, no. He's been through the wringer."

He tried to wiggle his fingers. They still worked. After a few minutes, Nick tried to sit up— and only then did his body finally decide to start sending him signals again. He was curled tightly on his side, legs up against his chest. His arms were being held tightly behind his back. He could feel thin plastic biting into his wrists.

Panic. Nick tried to get his arms free but he couldn't. He tried to sit up but he couldn't. He tried to scream for help but he couldn't. His voice cracked and came out as only air. His head began pounding. Nausea roiled hot in his stomach.

"ETA? Um. About an hour and fifteen. Yeah. ...Yeah?"

Kyle's voice. He recognized it, and some part of his brain realized how different it sounded. Still loud, but more severe. Hardened. He was talking to someone, but Nick couldn't figure out _who_.

"Uh-huh. ...Oh, really? Okay. We can just— yeah. Bunch them together."

Nick swallowed the dryness in his mouth and throat, and squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't even try to make mental excuses for the hot tears that fell from them. His wrists felt like they were being ripped apart. The pressure of his unmovable arm against his injured ribs began to feel mind-numbingly painful.

"Yep. I'll see you in a bit. Lang out."

There was a little electronic jingle like a phone being disconnected— in fact, it sounded just like the satellite phone he'd once picked up—

The _military _satellite phone.

His stomach flipped wildly over. Fear shot through him. The panic made his breaths fall even shorter.

That was why Kyle had so many supplies. Why he had a well-working vehicle. Why he knew about the west coast. Why he—

_Why he'd picked Nick up in the first place._

A whine bubbled up out of his chest and he couldn't stop it. His irritated throat brought out a short, painful cough. He pulled desperately at his wrists, but nothing happened. But his legs weren't bound— if he could just—

"Settle down back there," Kyle barked, voice full of a willfulness that, a day ago, would have sounded uncharacteristic. "Nick? I know you're awake. I don't want to have to put you out again, but don't think I won't."

Nick stared at Kyle's cot across from him. He jolted when he noticed how empty the shuttle was, and lifted his head, trying to get a better look around. Vertigo dragged him back down to the rough carpet. He panted for a second, and coughed again, and asked the most important question he had:

"Where's Rob?"

"Gone."

The single word felt like a death knell in Nick's mind, strengthening the panic and fear in his body until it thrummed like a too-tight guitar string, whiplashing through him with a nearly physical force. He shook all over and tried to breathe slowly, but it was impossible.

He didn't understand. His stomach turned. His head spun. He didn't understand.

"_Why?_"

There was a short, sharp noise of laughter. "You think I was going to keep that damn thing around? Fuck that. I knew it was gonna rip me apart if I touched you. So I got rid of it."

Nick turned his face into the carpet, feeling the tears spilling out of his eyes. Sobs began to shudder through him, and he tried to stave them off just to prevent the pain, but they were far too strong. He tucked his legs up closer to his chest, hoping to not sound like he was crying, before realizing it didn't really matter and dragging in a painful, jerky gasp.

And Kyle laughed at him. "Can't understand what anyone would see in that stinky mutt."

_He was my friend_, Nick thought, pressing his face harder into the floor. _The only one who hadn't died or left me behind. _Everyone else had. Nobody else had cared. He thought all the way back to his childhood, grade school, high school, college— nobody had given a _fuck_. So he hadn't either. He had never belonged anywhere or with anyone. But Rob...

Rob was different, he hadn't cared, not even after Nick had _shot_ at him on that first morning after they'd run into each other. He'd kept him safe. Kept him warm. Kept him alive.

And now...

Now...

He was gone. Like a meaningless old toy or useless car. Something that didn't matter. Something _meant _to be thrown away. Drained of all its value and tossed to the side like it should be.

Had Coach and the others had done the exact same thing to him?

Nick sobbed into the floor. The shuttle rumbled underneath him as it continued down the road.

* * *

_(A/N: Sorry, not as long a chapter this time. I hope I made up for it by not being eight months late._

_Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Lizzy._

_If you're interested, I have L4D2 for Steam now (and a laptop that can play it). I'd love to play a game with you guys! (Just be warned, I suck.) There's a link to my Steam on my ff.n profile._

_As always, thanks for reading.__)_


	34. The Derelict

Kyle hummed a tune to himself as he drove along. The shuttle rocked gently from side to side as the tires plowed through the snow. It had always been easy to drive. Not too bad on gasoline. He mostly needed it for transportation. Not of goods — although that was a nice bonus — but of people. At the most, he'd been able to fit four back there. Two females, two males. They'd been loud and annoying and he'd been glad to be rid of them.

Nick had stopped crying a while ago, but he could still hear his rough, uneven breathing. He turned the rear-view mirror down to keep an eye on him, making sure he wasn't trying to get up and run off — not that he had a lot of escape options — but the old man just kept laying there.

The silence was nice, but worrying. He didn't want Nick thinking of a way out, and now that the sedative had worn off, it wouldn't be long before he thought of something. The man wasn't stupid; there was no way he could live this long on simple luck. He seemed like the kind of guy who would saw his own leg off to escape a bear trap.

"...You know," Kyle started speaking, watching with satisfaction as Nick jerked in surprise, "this is really a good thing you're doing. Maybe you'll be the one that helps them find a cure."

Nick was quiet for a very long time, so long that Kyle thought he might actually be unconscious. Then he spoke in his hoarse voice, "You lied to me."

It was such an obvious statement that Kyle had to laugh again. "Of course I fucking lied to you. How else was I supposed to get you to come with me to a military compound? I'm sure you've heard lots of stories. Do you know what they'll do to you?"

"I don't want to know. Kyle..." Nick let out a shaking breath, "I don't want to know."

"Lots of blood tests at first, just to see what sort of immunity you've got going on. Did you know there's a difference between being a carrier and having immunity?"

"_Please._ Stop. I don't..."

"Yeah, I hope you like needles, buddy. You're gonna be seeing a lot of them." Kyle stretched out his arms, cracking his neck. "Ah, it's not so bad. You won't be hungry. ...Not for long."

Nick coughed, that horrible obnoxious noise that sounded like he was dying. It had made Kyle nervous at first. He didn't want to drag this carrier around for hundreds of miles just to have him drop dead at the doorstep, but the antibiotics seemed to be helping. It probably sounded a lot worse than it actually was, like most coughs.

"So, Maine, huh? Safe zone up there? I bet there's more carriers, eh?"

"D—" Nick was cut off by another fit of coughing, "—don't you fucking... don't you fucking touch them."

"Ah, so they _are_ up there? Sounds like a good place to go, then."

"N— no. Not them. They'll... I hope they fucking kill you." The snarling venom in Nick's weak voice was surprisingly forceful. "Don't you f-fucking turn your back on me, Kyle. I am going to _burn you alive._"

Kyle was finding the conversation rather hilarious, given the circumstance. "Technically, my back is already turned to you. Nice try, but you aren't scaring me." He peered through the windshield at the headlights cutting across the dark road. "You know, you..."

He trailed off as light flickered in the corner of his eye. The satellite phone lay on the passenger seat, and the screen lit up a moment before it let off a shrill ring. Kyle leaned over and grabbed it.

The voice on the other side was deep and male with a thick Mexican accent. It was someone he hadn't talked to before; unlike the woman back at Central he'd contacted earlier, this person sounded eager to be off of the phone as quickly as possible.

"Is this Lang?"

"Yes, and you are...?"

The voice scoffed. "This is Private Barratt."

Kyle glanced in the rear-view. Nick hadn't moved. "Never met you before. New recruit?"

"No. I'm stationed at the facility." His words were clipped and hurried. "The last driver hasn't come back yet. I got _'volunteered'_ for this run."

"Ah." Kyle shoved the phone into the crook between his shoulder and head to keep both hands on the wheel. "I was under the impression Central would be out here."

"They're changing collection protocol," Barratt said, and didn't elaborate. It was easy enough to guess what had happened. "I'll meet you at sector... three-one-five. You know where that is, don't you?"

Kyle cleared his throat. "I got a map somewhere."

"Twenty-five miles south of Shaftsbury."

"...So he's going to _that_ hellhole then?"

Barratt was silent for a few seconds. "No, Lang. _It_ is going to Shaftsbury _facility_ to be kept and contained. ...And you are goddamn lucky we don't do the same to you."

"Mmm-hmm." Kyle rolled his eyes. Another uninfected asshole who thought himself better simply because he hadn't had contact with a zombie yet. "I'll be there in about... two hours."

"I'll be waiting." The connection cut off, and Kyle listened to the silence for a while before returning the phone to the passenger seat. He kept his eyes on the road. Flecks of snow passed through the headlight's beams and caught up on the windshield wipers.

"Still awake, Nick?"

He got no answer.

"Just a little while now, buddy. Can't wait to be rid of you... I need some fucking sleep." He yawned, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Kyle bounced his eyes between the road and the rear-view mirror, satisfied at the lack of activity he was seeing back there.

The rest of the drive went quietly. Occasionally, Nick would cough, but he never spoke up. Kyle rubbed at his eyes when he began to see the pale edge of the sunrise on the horizon to his right. It had been a bit over the two hours he'd estimated, but he couldn't see the containment truck anywhere yet. Hopefully he hadn't taken a wrong turn. Maybe Barratt had changed position.

When he leaned over to pick up the phone again, a flash of light caught his attention. It was a few miles ahead, up on top of a low hill— a large spotlight that blinked four or five times before going out.

Kyle slowed the shuttle to a stop and put it into park, watching as a pair of headlights came alive just below where the spotlight had been. "Finally," he mumbled. He couldn't wait to get some sleep.

He reached up and turned on the overhead light, climbing out of the driver's seat. With a sigh, he bent down and made sure that Nick's arms were still tied before stepping over him, to the other side of the shuttle.

"Okie-dokie," he said brightly. "End of the line. Let's get you going."

Nick's shallow breathing became more rapid. His voice was cracking from either disuse or, more likely, fear. "No. No. Please, Kyle, no."

"I'm sorry. Really, I am."

"Please. Please, please, _please_. You can just— just let me go. I won't even look back— I won't—"

Kyle sighed and crouched down next to his medical supplies, phasing the man's hoarse voice out. He sifted carefully through his collection until he found the aged bottle near the bottom, next to a rag in a sealed plastic bag. He was careful when he brought it out, turning his head away from the remnant fumes.

Nick, on the floor, was trying his best to get himself sitting up. Kyle hoped that the difficulty he was having in moving around wasn't trace effects of the sedative from before; he didn't want to overdose the old man and kill him. It had happened once before and Central had not been happy.

"Kyle, please. Oh my God. _Please_. Don't do this. I'll— I'll—"

"Hush, hush," Kyle muttered, sprinkling some of the liquid over the rag. He held it as far away from himself as he could. "It's going to be okay, Nick. This is so much better than starving to death. This is... it's mercy. Do you understand? Please, accept it."

He knelt down and grabbed a handful of Nick's hair, yanking his head up. The man let out a reflexive cry of pain and Kyle used the moment to clamp the rag over his mouth and nose. Nick bucked, and kicked with his legs, but he wasn't very strong, and Kyle was able to hold him still without much effort. Nick must have had some clue as to what was on the rag, because he held his breath and wouldn't take in air.

"Oh, come on. You have to take a breath sometime."

Kyle waited about ten seconds before releasing his hand from the man's hair and digging his knuckles into his side. Nick's pain reflex was still working at least, and he was forced to drag in a deep breath. He moaned and began panting in terror. Kyle smiled and kept the cloth tightly over his face.

"There you go, buddy. Like slipping into a hot bath."

Nick was quite the fighter, he thought, as the man kicked and thrashed and attempted to shout until the very end. But anesthetics were around for a reason, and after a few minutes, he stopped struggling. His body slowly relaxed and he fell silent.

Kyle waited a couple more moments before removing his hand. He let the man drop back to the floor, quickly stuffing the rag back into the sealed bag. Then, he knelt and patted the man's cheeks a few time, and pressed down hard on his fingernails to check his pain response; minimal. It was a good sign; he didn't want Nick jumping awake in the middle of being transferred.

There was a rumbling noise outside; _finally, _the containment truck had caught up. It drew up and parked across from him. The squat storage area in the back was built with metal and lined twice-over in thick plastic. Recently, he hadn't heard of the Infection being transferred via air— only by bodily fluid— but they were still taking all the precautions that were possible.

Kyle straightened up as much as he could, wiping his hands off on his pants. God, why did they always have to smell so _awful_? He opened the shuttle door and stepped outside, grunting as he dragged his catch out toward him.

He heard the truck's door open and shut, and the crunch of boots in the snow.

"Is it sedated?" The accent was familiar, despite being filtered through a breathing mask; it was the man from earlier, Barratt.

"Yeah," Kyle grunted, leaning down and tugging at Nick's shoulders. "Like I told Central, thirty-five, male. Definitely either carrying or immune... some zombie messed up his face before I met him."

"All right. I'll take it from here, then."

Kyle stepped back as the other man came and glanced over the body on the floor. He paused to make sure his breathing mask was securely in place, then picked Nick up and slung him over his shoulder like a bag of vegetables.

"Doesn't weigh that much. You sure it's thirty-five?"

"That's what he told me," Kyle said, shrugging.

Barratt walked to the back of the truck, where he unlocked and yanked open the back. Kyle followed, peering inside to see three others; equally as filthy and decrepit as Nick was. One, a young Caucasian woman, squinted up at him, horror on her face.

She was mouthing words, but Barratt didn't care; he just dropped Nick unceremoniously to the floor of the truck's storage, then shut the doors again. The girl began to wail. Kyle could barely hear it past the doors and plastic sealant. Barratt slammed his hand a few times on the metal. "Shut the _fuck up_ in there!"

Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets. The countryside began to brighten a little as the sun started to come up over the treeline.

Barratt began back through the snow to the front of the truck. Kyle followed behind him and watched as he pulled out a clipboard from behind the front seat and began writing.

"This is... sector three-one-five," Barratt mumbled aloud as he wrote. "That's twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three... that one will make twenty-four."

"Ah, twenty-four already? That's quite a—"

Barratt lifted his eyes from the clipboard and stopped writing. "That's all I'm going to need from you, Lang. You should go now."

Kyle looked to the end of the truck again, then shrugged. "I thought Central would be... you know, sending some supplies? I could really use some—"

"I said, '_you should go now,'_" Barratt repeated, climbing into the driver's seat. "I'm not here to hand some goods to some filthy carrier. Call Central. They handle that shit, not me." He shut the door, then turned the engine over, and didn't give Kyle another glance as he turned the wheel and pulled out onto the road. He accelerated, kicking up snow as he drove in the same direction he'd come from.

Kyle sighed, pushing a hand through his hair as he watched the tail-lights disappear over the hill. He returned to his shuttle and spent the morning sorting all his goods out again. Most of Nick's crap he tossed out the door, but the gun and ammunition he kept. It was a heavy weapon, not meant for close range, but it was a hell of a lot better than the shotgun he'd been carrying around.

He unfolded his map and scribbled in a note about what sector he was in, then put it back, and lay down on his cot. A few hours, then he'd call Central to get his supplies.

Then it'd be back to work again.

Another supply drop of gasoline, and he'd have plenty to get to Maine.

* * *

The floor was rumbling underneath him. It was the first bit of information that his body supplied to his brain. It was soft and comforting, and he wanted to sink into it and never come back out. Nick didn't care to know any more than that. All he wanted was to go back to sleep. Slowly, he began to recognize the feeling of freezing metal against his forehead and it did nothing to weaken the way his head was starting to pound. God, his arms hurt. Everything hurt. As usual. Why couldn't he just go back to _sleep?_

He cracked his eyes open but couldn't see anything. His throat began to tickle and he swallowed to try and get the sensation to go away.

There was a soft noise somewhere behind him. He thought it was just the wind or something, but the more he listened the more he thought it sounded like someone breathing.

Then, a soft voice:

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..."

He knew that it was whispering, but it was so close to him that it sounded much louder, and on reflex he tried to jerk as far away from it as possible. Of course, he knew he shouldn't have, he knew he should be lying _still_.

He also should have realized what side of his body he was laying on— the broken one. His ribs sent that familiar white-hot pain through his chest and up his arms and down his legs. Nick bit down on his tongue to keep from crying out.

The voice kept talking. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death..."

He grit his teeth and rolled onto his stomach. The pain ebbed by only degrees, but it was enough for him to take a deeper breath. An awful smell crept into his mouth and nose, a mix of rot and what he hoped was only human waste. His stomach turned and a gag tried to make its way up his throat, but he swallowed hard and fought it off, knowing it would make the pain much worse.

"Hail Mary, full of grace..."

The owner of the voice didn't stop, and Nick realized that she— well, it _sounded_ somewhat female— was either ignoring him or was too far into her own world to even notice. He took in another deep breath, but the smell choked him again; it was like he was in a portable toilet. Nick pressed his forehead against the icy floor and tried to stave off his gag reflex. He ended up coughing again.

Immediately, the praying next to him stopped. Nick rolled himself onto his uninjured side, so that he was facing the source of the voice. At least she couldn't sneak up behind him. His coughs trailed off and he let his head drop back down to the floor. He stayed in that position, catching his breath and cursing inwardly at the weakness settling into his body.

Then, there was another voice. It came from behind him. A man, maybe around his age.

"Hey, you all right? Hello?"

Nick tried to roll onto his back, at least to stop anyone from being behind him, but his body wouldn't comply and his arms flared with pain. He sighed through his nose, shutting his eyes tightly even though it made no difference if they were open or not.

He heard the squeak of shoes on the floor and the sound of someone shifting around, coming closer.

"Hello? You okay? Come on, say something."

Nick let out another breath. "I'm fine," he said. His throat was dry and his voice cracked. "I'm okay."

"Oh, thank God." The man was practically on top of him now. "The way they put you in here, we all thought you were dead."

Something touched his back and he flinched, but couldn't pull away.

"Hey, it's okay," the stranger said quickly, "don't worry, my hands are tied too. We're all in this together. We're all... are... are you a carrier?"

"I don't know," Nick lied, wiggling around to try to put distance between them.

"You've got to be. That's why they took you. Right?"

"...I don't know," he repeated.

"Look, I... _we've_ heard things. About where we're going. It's a testing facility. For... for people like us."

Nick shut his eyes again. God, he didn't want to hear it. He didn't care. It had been over since Rob—

The feeling of fear and anger cut back into him as if it had never left. No longer numbed by the drugs, it turned his gut into a whirling mess of icy and hot feelings that made him want to vomit or scream. The sensation dug into his chest and limbs and brain and it was the only thing he could think of.

The dog was gone.

_His_ dog was gone.

"You okay? Hey, don't hyperventilate— you don't sound so good."

Nick ignored the stranger talking behind him and braced himself as he attempted to lurch into an upright position. His head felt full of air and although he couldn't see the floor it was still spinning underneath him. He grunted as he managed to get onto his knees. At least he was up. He hunched over and tried to get his breathing under control.

"Okay. You're up. That's good... that's great. What's your name? I'm—"

"Christ, will you just _shut up _for a damn second?" Nick hissed. "Just... back the fuck off. Jesus."

"All right, all right," the stranger murmured sheepishly. The shoes squeaked on the floor again. "I'm sorry, it's just... I haven't met another... _person_... like us before. You know... a carrier?"

Nick shook his head, forgetting that in the darkness, nobody would be able to see it. Abruptly he began to cough. After every one, he felt a bit more terror, knowing that soon he would be tasting blood again. So far, all he tasted was stale drool, which he spat out onto the floor beneath him.

A third voice trailed to his ears from the far end of the space he was in.

"Carter, he don't sound so good..."

This one was definitely female. Nick squinted into the dark, trying to see her, but it was useless. "I said I'm fine," he growled. Not even he could fool himself into hearing anything but weakness in his voice.

The floor heaved underneath them and he scrambled to not get tossed down. Nick managed to get his feet underneath him so he could scoot backwards, into a wall. It was freezing against his back.

"We're close now," the other man whispered. "I bet that was the perimeter fence we just drove over."

Nick shivered. His arms were numb and he wasn't sure he could even move his fingers anymore. So he was in the back of a truck. Like a stack of firewood or something. _Fantastic_, he thought.

The first voice he'd heard started back up again, not with prayer, but with a chain of sobs. "Oh no, oh no, oh no," it keened.

"Adrian, hush," the other adult spoke loudly. "We're going to be okay."

Now the girl started up too. Nick leaned the back of his head against the rumbling wall.

"Carter, I'm so scared. I'm so scared."

"Shh, shh." The shoes squeaked and Nick heard Carter moving away, toward the girl. His muscles started to relax marginally.

The walls around them rattled and he heard the distant sound of air-brakes being activated. Nick pressed himself back against the metal as the floor stopped shaking underneath them and everything turned quiet, save for the noise of crying that was filling his ears.

"It's okay, Jessica. We're going to be fine. I promise. I told you I'd take care of you two, and I'm going to... nothing's going to happen..."

Nick wanted his arms free now more than ever, just to plug his ears. The crying dug deep into his brain and filled him with that icy, paralyzing feeling that he hadn't felt since the subway tunnels in D.C. _Shut up, shut up, shut up_, he screamed in his head, but was unable to shout aloud, unable to pull himself free of the terror clutching at him from all sides.

The tenuous control he'd had on his breathing snapped and he was panting again. He wasn't sure he could feel the pain— at least not the pain in his chest. The memory of the bridge made him feel like his face was on fire.

Then, all at once, it was over. The truck's doors squealed loudly and they opened. Pale, searing sunlight poured into the dusty space. Nick squinted against the light, trying to get himself facing it. Both voices that were the source of his crying stopped instantaneously.

Two figures stood at the doors; tall, dressed in military fatigues with breathing masks concealing most of their faces. One held a clipboard, the other, a rifle.

"All right. Four this time. One female, three males."

Nick could see now the people he'd been contained with. The one that had been praying wasn't a girl, but a boy, just a teenager. His hair was dark and shaggy and he was curled up against the wall, rocking back and forth and shaking his head. The older man was next to him with the girl, both pale and filthy with eyes wide in fear. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, with ratty, mousy hair that fell in strings around her face. Nick was reminded of a face he'd seen long ago, from a raised bridge standing over a rain-soaked Georgia town.

The man outside with the clipboard wrote something down, then set it on the edge of the truck. He was quiet for a minute before speaking.

"Jesus, they just get worse and worse, don't they?"

"Got to make do," the other said gruffly. "Technicians are waiting. Let's process 'em."

They took the girl first. She moaned in terror, mumbling Carter's name over and over. The man with the clipboard took a quick once-over of her, jotted something down, and then grabbed her arm and led her away.

A third one came around and climbed into the truck. He was a massive, burly man that zeroed in on Nick, who shrank against the truck wall, trying to make himself smaller. The big man bent down and grabbed him by the arm, lifting him and dragging him out like he weighed nothing at all.

The sunlight dazzled him as he was pulled out into it. He tried to look around and see where he was, but the reflection of light off of snow and metal took too long for him to adjust to, and by the time he had just begun to recognize the sharp edge of a building, the man who had grabbed him was dragging him through the snow at a pace that he had to fight to keep up with. There was a beep and a loud buzz, and then the noise of a heavy door being opened. The sunlight died out and a long concrete room stretched out ahead of them. There was a sign on the wall.

_CIVIL EMERGENCY DEFENSE AGENCY_

_RESEARCH FACILITY — ZONE 209234 SHAFTSBURY_

His stomach dropped to his knees.

Kyle's voice came unbidden to his mind, something that he wasn't sure was a memory or not—

_Do you know what they'll do to you?_

The first thing Nick noticed was the smell. It wasn't that of death or rot. Unfamiliar. A sharp scent like that of an antiseptic seemed to be mixed in with the smell of stagnant water. For some reason, it turned his stomach immediately; an instinctive reflex to _run, run, run_ flared in his entire body, and he began to struggle against the man holding him.

"Knock it off." The fingers around his arm clamped tighter. "Move it."

"No," Nick murmured. "No. Please."

The big man stopped, adjusted his grip on Nick's arm, and with his other hand, slapped him in the face.

Nick reeled, and would have gone straight down to the floor if he wasn't being held up. The yellow lights above his head blurred, shrank and turned gray. For a second he thought he was about to pass out, but he slowly came back around. The man was still holding him up, now glaring at him. His voice was a low growl.

"Don't you fucking say 'no' to me, carrier. Keep walking."

Blinking hard to try to dispel the pain, Nick stumbled along. It was difficult; he could barely see the floor and his arms were tied behind his back. His legs felt weak and rubbery.

The big man stopped walking. "Sit," he ordered.

There was a small stool on the floor, next to a table and stained wall. A row of storage shelves sat with papers and boxes on them. Nick did as he was told, fearing being hit again— the first was such a heavy blow that he thought a second one might snap his neck. He turned his gaze to the floor and didn't move it.

A voice came from behind him, female, older. "All right, tell me what you've got."

"Male, thirty-five. Lang picked him up somewhere in New York." The big man came around behind him and cut the plastic binding his wrists together. Nick brought his hands into his lap, studying them. Sore, swollen. Deep red lines digging across his skin. His fingers tingled. He thought about striking out, but a couple of men standing nearby with assault rifles made him stop.

"Lang? That piece of trash is still around?"

"Well, apparently he does a good job."

"Yeah, I can see that," the female voice grumbled. Nick felt a slight shove on his shoulder. "What the hell do you think we're gonna be able do with this?"

"Hell if I know, Jacobson. Central wants anything we can find."

"...Well, I guess it _is_ better than nothing." The female voice moved around in front of him. Nick stared at her boots and military pants. Her voice held no compassion. "Look at me," she said.

Nick kept his eyes on her feet.

"Do what she says," the big man growled. He came closer, a threatening shadow.

Shivering, Nick slowly lifted his head. He did not look at her, but rather past her, at the cracked concrete walls and puddles of water all over the floor. The woman studied him for a few seconds, then let out a snort of disgust and turned away.

"Jesus, Barratt. Maybe give me something to work with next time."

"Sorry." His tone was unapologetic.

The woman— Jacobson— turned away from Nick. There was a rustle of papers. "Number... three-fifteen, zero-twenty-four," she said, stepping close with a cotton swab wrapped in plastic. "Open your mouth."

All he could do was comply. She swabbed the inside of his cheek and then walked back out of view.

"Jesus, you're still doing that stupid test?" The big man asked. "What makes you even remotely think that this isn't a carrier?"

"Regulations," Jacobson muttered.

A low buzz started up behind him. Nick tilted his head slightly, trying to figure out what it might be, but then a cold, gloved hand grasped the back of his neck and there were clippers going through his hair. They hummed against his skull as she worked without preamble of gentleness. Nick watched distantly as his hair fell to the floor in large chunks.

All the while, Jacobson and the big man continued their conversation— as if he weren't even there.

"Did you hear about the new doctor?"

"Yeah. Coming up from D.C., isn't she?"

"I don't know if it's reassignment or what. Not sure who would _volunteer_ to work in this shithole with these damn things."

It didn't take long for her to be done. Nick shivered harder; he hadn't put much thought into how much his hair had been keeping his head warm. Jacobson brushed a hand roughly over the top of his head to sweep away any remainders, then grabbed his chin and moved on to his beard without pausing.

His mind started to phase it out. He couldn't think about it, because thinking about it would make it real and irreversible. Instead, he concentrated on anything else that he could bring to mind. His old house. The ringtone on his cellphone. The color of his favorite shirt. How much his car keys had weighed.

Anything but this.

Jacobson finished his face. "Strip," she ordered.

Anything.

_Anything._

Nick began to take his clothes off, slowly, until the big man next to him balled his fists where he could see them, and then he hurried. It was freezing. He trembled and stared at the floor. Most of the clothes he'd had since Eight Springs. Now they lay discarded on the damp concrete. _How could this happen, _he wondered. _This isn't happening. It can't be happening._

They shaved the rest of him. Pulled him away from the stool and to an area partitioned by a shower curtain. Covered him with a powder that itched and smelled like toilet cleaner. They sprayed him with water that was barely lukewarm. He switched rapidly between hugging himself for warmth and covering himself to try and have some semblance of decency.

Any illusion he had of his dignity being intact melted away when they dragged him to a second curtain partition, held him down on a table and tattooed his arm. It was painful, but not as painful as the icy twisting in his heart and the crushing, breathless feeling crashing down around him.

_C-315-024._

He had a number. He had a fucking _number._ Like a farm animal.

Reality sunk in. This was it. After all that, the journey he'd taken, everything he'd fought and seen, and this was where it was going to end. In a filthy research facility, with needles in his arms, nothing but another number in a file system.

They slapped a cheap plastic bandage over the tattoo and yanked him away from the table. The skin on his arm burned. He didn't fight; he didn't have the strength or the courage to. The huge black man that had dragged him in here was armed with a pistol and a massive shotgun over his shoulder. Maybe if he could get a hold of the gun...

"_No, no! Please, don't take me in there!"_

The shout came from a young male voice. Nick surmised it was the kid from the back of the truck. He listened while the woman that had shaved him tossed him a set of ragged, stained clothes, ordering him to put them on. The pants were itchy and the shirt was about as threadbare as anything he'd seen. They smelled like a hospital.

"_I don't want it! The light! Let me go!"_

Nick tugged the shirt over his head. _At least it's clean_, he thought distantly.

The kid started shrieking, high and loud like an injured animal. It sounded like he was being slaughtered. Nick pressed his hands over his ears to mute it, but then the big man grabbed his arm and yanked him along.

There was a high, loud crackling noise, like someone had stuck a knife in an electrical socket. The kid screamed in pain. Nick could hear the noise of something hard striking something soft.

"Keep moving," the soldier— technician, whatever— barked. "You want the same treatment? Move your ass."

He was led to a large metal door, locked from this side. The soldier hauled it open and it made a loud squeal. Icy air poured in from the other side, and Nick couldn't remember feeling so cold. This room was long, with a corridor stretching out before him with chain link walls on either side. The floor sloped on either side into a rusted drain that spanned the entire hall. Nick was led past several of the chain doors and saw people inside, young and old and male and female, wearing the same clothes as him, with the same shaved hair and branded arms. The smell of human waste was worse here than in the truck. He could hear dozens of echoing voices, mumbling and crying and shouting.

The soldier stopped at one chain door, pulling it open. It squeaked loudly.

"Here you go, 315. Home sweet home."

Nick tried to resist going in, but the man was too big and too strong, and just shoved him inside so hard that he tripped and crashed to the floor. Hard, icy concrete bit into his knees. The walls around him were stained brick that stretched up to the low, sloped ceiling. There was a bucket in the corner that wasn't empty.

The door slammed behind him. He looked just in time to see the soldier place a padlock on it and walk away without saying anything else.

A few voices called out to him. Nick couldn't make out their words, but the voice of the soldier was loud and clear and echoed like a discharging gunshot.

"Shut the fuck up, all of you! Goddammit!"

Nick crawled into the back corner and pushed himself into it, hugging his arms. The other voices swirled through the air outside, disjointed and faded. One of them screaming very loudly, not words, just some gutteral animal screech. Another was sobbing, high and wild. He thought he might have heard singing.

He pressed his hands against his ears and stared at the other side of his cell, which sat only a few feet across from him. Not even enough room to stretch his legs out.

_Do you know what they'll do to you?_

He tugged his knees up to his chest, and kept his hands over his ears, listening intently to his own ragged breathing and jittering heartbeat. Nick shut his eyes, trying to block it all out, but the hard, cold floor underneath him couldn't be ignored.

_I miss my dog,_ he thought.

Nick rocked slowly back and forth to try and stay warm, eyes shut and ears plugged, imagining scalpels and needles and cold, gloved hands touching him. _No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no._

_Do you know what they'll do to you?_

He knew it wouldn't be long until he found out.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Blue Virtue [and all you lovelies in the 8Spr chat, I love you guys!]_

_This is the last arc of the story. I'm ball-parking it at about 4-5 more chapters until the last two [which may or may not turn into 3-4 on their own since they are so long], and then the epilogue._

_Anyway, thanks for waiting! Coming up next: The Ward. In which Nick meets a person that he never imagined he'd find in a place like this.)_


	35. The Ward

Within hours, they'd dragged him out of his cell and brought him to a room with a dentist's chair in one corner and a man with a rifle in the other. It was the cleanest place he'd seen in ages. Two people held him down on the chair and a third shoved a needle repeatedly into his arm until it hit a vein. Nick watched as his own blood moved out through a plastic tube and into a collection bag, already marked with the sickeningly familiar number that was also on his arm.

"Finally bringing in some of the docs from down south, next week," the girl holding his arm said.

The man on the other side of him answered. "Heard about that. They think we can't do it good enough ourselves, huh?" He shifted, getting a better grip on Nick's shoulder.

None of them even looked directly at him.

"Probably. Who knows? Maybe Central's finally decided to shut down the petting zoo."

Nick stared at the third person, the one holding the collection container. He had a breathing mask like all the others, the big bulky things that covered everything below their eyes. The man stared at the blood swirling in the jar and took no notice of the person it was coming from. The container was about half-full. He didn't even know he'd had that much in his body.

He could hear a soft rumbling from somewhere, like the noise of a generator or heating system. Nick glanced up to the ceiling and saw that the air ducts had been sealed off with thick plastic and industrial tape. The walls were bare with old brown stains. He wondered what the building had been used for before the military got to it.

They started talking again.

"634 went nuts again yesterday. They had to put it in solitary."

"Is that what all that noise was about?"

"Yeah, guess it went for Peterson. Almost tore his throat out."

Nick let his gaze drift down to the scuffed floor. The grip on his arm loosened slightly, enough to provide some slight relief; maybe if he kept still and silent, they wouldn't pin him so hard to the chair. What did they expect him to do? He was barely able to lift a rifle anymore. How could they possibly expect him to overpower three people _and_ the big guy in the corner with the gun?

Their voices started to become a low buzz in the back of his head because he was tired of listening to them. They talked as if the world hadn't ended, like underpaid, bored employees. Like what they were holding to a dentist's chair and draining blood out of wasn't a human being.

_Of course not,_ Nick's mind told him. _You're just a number now._

He let his eye trail over the ink branded into his arm. It wasn't a professional job. The five looked more like a backwards 'z' and the zero wasn't even a complete circle. He'd done better ink jobs himself, and he wasn't even that good at it.

Nick wiggled a bit to try to get more comfortable; they were putting an awkward pressure on his arm that was aggravating his ribs. Instead of letting him move about, they pushed harder to keep him immobile. The girl grunted in irritation. He'd barely moved at all and she was already getting pissed.

"Jesus, sit _still_," she growled.

Nick opened his mouth to talk, and got a single word out — '_It'—_ and then the bigger man holding his other arm lifted his shoulder and slammed it back down. Perhaps before all of this, it might not have hurt, and it might have just served as a warning, but nothing healed fractured ribs except time, and Nick had not allowed himself enough. He gasped in pain and twisted against the arms holding him.

"_Please,_" he hissed. "It _hurts —_"

"You talk when we tell you to talk," the technician snarled through the mask, inches from his face. "Now stay still, goddammit."

The one holding the collection container chuckled. "This is one of the new ones. Doesn't know its place yet."

"You'd think at least _one_ of them would have the intelligence to fucking _listen_," the technician said.

Nick tried to breathe slowly, tried not to let his mind fall into panic. He knew they weren't trying to smother him, but that was what it felt like. Swallowing a few times, he focused on the wall across from him, eye tracing the edges of a faded stain, around and around, over and over.

"God, what a pain in the ass," the woman grumbled.

A long, breathless few minutes passed, and they were done taking his blood. All at once, the pressure came off of him. The air was suddenly thin and cool again. He breathed in a deep, slow breath, trying to get used to the feeling of movement again.

Without much warning, the woman yanked him back to his feet, where vertigo immediately slammed down on him. Black flooded the edges of his vision, and his legs crumpled.

He remembered them yelling something, but it all collapsed silently into a timeless black void, and when he came back around, he was face-down on the concrete floor of his cell, nauseated and strengthless. It took him ages just to roll over and tuck himself back into the corner. Black bruises stained the inside of his arm from his wrist to his elbow. It hurt to move it.

They didn't take him back out for blood after that. It was mostly because he couldn't stand up on his own anymore, at least not without staggering around dizzily. He was too weak and too cold; most of the time he just lay curled in the corner of his cell, hands over his ears, unable to do anything else. Nick wasn't sure what was wrong with himself. He couldn't remember being drugged after arriving, and the last time he felt so weak was all the way back when he'd had pneumonia.

He wasn't sure if it was coming back or not; either his body was too weak to even cough or he'd somehow kicked it despite the cold cell he was trapped in. He couldn't bring himself to worry. His entire mind felt splintered, and yet hollowed out, both empty and whirling with wordless anger. He figured he might be dying, and the relief he felt at that thought should have scared him. Instead, he focused only on that, on the hope that some day he would no longer be able to feel the cold and the hurt.

Time passed, and Maine was long out of his mind. Maine and Eight Springs and any other place that wasn't this. It was starting to become all that he knew and all he could think of. He listened to the wastewater dripping into the long drain outside his cell and the noises of the other carriers in here with him and found that he couldn't remember anything else.

The quarantine area didn't have any natural light, just fluorescent bulbs that flickered sporadically. He measured his 'days' — if they could be called that — in the lengths of time between 'meals' — if _they _could be called _that_. Nick believed that it was twice a day when one of the guards would yank open the quarantine door, holding a black trash bag. Out if it the guard would pull out plastic bottles of water and roll them under the gap of the cell doors. Nick learned very quickly not to drink his share all at once, no matter how thirsty he was. The times that they offered him food and water seemed to come at random.

At night, he curled up in the corner of his cell and hugged his knees to his chest and slept the best he could with his hands over his ears and the persistent endless cold clinging to his body. He dreamt of trains and tunnels but none of those things seemed to be terrifying anymore.

_You're losing it,_ his mind would tell him as he stared at the rust stains on the wall.

"No, I'm not," he'd mumble aloud.

* * *

It was two days later, by Nick's count — as accurate as that could be — when they took everyone out one by one and shuttled them into a concrete room like the one he'd been processed in. There were small cages lined up along one side. The guards threw all the men in here, together, where most of them clumped up into groups and prayed or talked.

The first time, Nick had no idea what was going on. Barratt and a few of the other guards were pulling the others out of their cells and taking them away. Immediately his mind leapt to the conclusion that it was to be a mass execution, but he heard no screaming, and none of the others seemed to be struggling against the guards. He curled his fingers around the chain-link door of his cell and squinted down the corridor, trying to see what was happening. It was strangely quiet.

Barratt finally came and got him, growling in irritation as Nick staggered and fought to keep up with his long stride. The guard dropped him the second they'd got into the room, where he collapsed to his hands and knees and tried not to pass out. The door slammed and locked behind him.

He slowly caught his breath and moved himself until he was sitting on his knees. The smell of wet concrete and disinfectant came to his senses. Nick pressed his hands into his eyes, hoping that Barratt wouldn't throw the door open against his back as he sat there.

There were footsteps next to him, suddenly, and he jolted as a hand touched his shoulder.

"Hey, easy. It's me, Carter. Do you remember?"

Nick turned his head until he could see. It was the older man from the truck that had brought them all in, looking cleaner if not healthier. No hair, mangled clothes. And a number on his arm, just like Nick: _C-745-022._

Carter crouched down until he was eye-level and offered a wan smile. "Man, it's good to see you alive. Thought for sure they'd killed you already." He tugged on Nick's shoulder. "Come on, get up. Come over here. They don't want anyone hanging out near the door."

The older man helped him up and guided him away, to a corner where it was a bit drier. Nick couldn't stand by himself, so Carter let him slowly sink back down to sit against the wall, then crouched across from him on his haunches.

"They don't let the men mingle with the women," he explained, glancing behind them. "...How are you holding up?"

Nick shook his head, rubbing his face. Everything was fuzzy. "Feel like shit," he finally managed to mumble. His own voice sounded unfamiliar and distant, a hum in the back of his head.

"What have they been doing to you?" Carter asked, reaching out to steady him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Just drew blood," he answered, pawing at the hand on him momentarily before giving up and allowing Carter to support him. "A lot of it."

"Yeah, they've done that to all of us."

Even the act of lifting his eyes from the floor to look at the other man seemed to tire him. His voice didn't work and the ground looked like it was about to reach up and smack him in the face.

"They haven't given you anything, right?" Worry seemed to make the wrinkles on the older man's face deeper and darker. "None of their vaccines?"

Nick shook his head laxly. "No shots. Just took blood."

"Good. They... there's a lot of fucked-up shit going on in here."

He slowly lowered his head to rest it in his hands. "I see that."

"Look, man... we have to — we need to get out of this place."

"Yeah? What are you going to do? Steal a gun, bust the doors open?" Nick scoffed, not moving. Even his jaw was beginning to feel too heavy to move. "Heard what they did to that kid. You really think they give a shit about any of us?"

Carter let out a heavy sigh. "Adrian. His name's Adrian." Nick heard him shifting about, probably sitting down across from him. "I haven't seen him in days. ...I think they... they must have done something to him."

_Definitely dead_, Nick's mind told him. With some effort, he lifted his head.

Carter was staring at him. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet.

"We're going to die in here," he said softly.

There was a soft hissing noise on the other side of the door. Nick listened to it for a minute, tilting his head. Sounded like someone spraying something with a hose.

Carter shook his shoulder. "Are you listening, man? They're going to _kill us_."

Nick moved his eye from the door, to the wall, then slowly back around to the older man.

"I know."

* * *

When they dragged everyone back into the corridor, the floors and walls were dripping with water. Nick settled down in the driest corner of his cell, but the water still seeped through his clothes and made the chill worse. He studied his arm; the bruises were still healing, and were no longer an angry black color.

He tucked all his limbs close to his body for warmth, idly tracing the numbers on his other arm with a finger. The low humming murmur of the other subjects had become an endless static, somewhat comforting in its constancy. But there were always the random spurts of sobbing or screaming and Nick couldn't listen to it. He'd hold his hands over his ears and wait for it to go away.

There was the loud screech of the outer door opening. He crawled to the end of his cell to see. On the other side, it was well-lit, with clean white walls and linoleum. Nick was sure it was where the guards and technicians stayed. Every once in a while he thought he'd imagine a soft puff of warm air rushing in when the door opened.

He leaned against the chain-link, watching closely as one of the guards stepped into view. The big guy, Barratt — armed with his rifle and gas mask, as always. The door squealed shut behind him and he started down the corridor, glancing into the cells as he passed.

Nick curled up against the chain-link and watched as he approached.

Barratt stopped just a few feet shy of him. "Back up," he ordered.

Either because of the barrier between them — both of wire chain and the rubber and plastic of a gas mask — or because he was too tired to move again, Nick stayed put. He silently looked up at Barratt, studying him. Tall, young, probably late-twenties. His clothing was drab-gray; military garb, no doubt. It looked a lot warmer than the ratty shit Nick was given to wear.

"_Back. Up_," Barratt growled, turning toward the cell door. He lifted the rifle. "Get back there, 315. I'll blow your diseased fuckin' head off."

Nick let out a breath. "...I'm not scared of you."

"Oh yeah?" Barratt clicked the safety off, bringing the gun closer. It was a few feet from Nick's head now, muzzle staring him straight in the face. "How 'bout this, huh? Scared of this? You want to die today?"

He knew he should be terrified, and somewhere in his mind, he was. But the stronger, larger part of his brain wanted everything to be over, yearned for the guard to just _pull the trigger already_. Nick gazed at the barrel of the rifle, then slowly lifted his eyes to Barratt's face. "You can't kill me." He shifted his legs slightly. "My blood's probably worth more than you and everything you own."

Barratt lowered the rifle marginally, eyes narrowed behind the plastic of the mask. "You think you're smart, huh?" He shouldered the weapon and began fumbling for the keys. "You think you're the only one in here who's thought that?"

Nick pushed himself away from the chain-link as the guard went for the padlock. Bracing himself against the wall, he stood, one fist clenched. He stared at the man's gas mask, wondering how hard it would be to yank off.

"We only need _one_ carrier. All the others," Barratt snarled as he wrenched open the cell door, "are expendable."

Now, with the guard nearly on top of him, Nick was reminded of their difference in size. He'd never considered himself to be a small man, and perhaps in the past he could have given Barratt a fair fight. But the world had torn him down to nearly nothing, while the guard had probably not yet missed a meal.

Nick swung out; the only shot he knew he would get. His hand hit the hard plastic of the gas mask, but before he could even fumble for a hold, Barratt had thrown him against the wall as if he weighed nothing. He slammed against the damp concrete and dropped to the floor, winded but scrabbling for purchase, trying to get back up again.

Barratt stepped closer. "You carriers are the dumbest shits I've ever seen in my life."

"Y-yeah, I guess we are," he stammered, attempting to scramble away. He hit the back wall, and the guard kept approaching, steps slow and heavy. Cornered, he began to feel panic digging into his brain. "It's n-not like we asked for this. I'm n—"

"_Shut up_." The guard stopped, boots a few inches from his feet.

Nick, even with his voice cracking in terror, kept talking. "O-oh yeah, big man, huh? Beating the shit out of someone who c-can't fight back. Real f-f-fucking courageous."

"I'm telling you to shut your fucking mouth, before I rip off your jaw and leave you here to die." Barratt's voice had become eerily calm. "That'll be fun, 315. Bet you'll live just long enough to see the rest of that precious blood of yours pour into that drain out there."

The bigger man leaned closer, and Nick flinched back against the wall, shutting his eyes and awaiting the blow that he knew was coming. Nothing happened for a second, and he started to believe Barratt was just going to shoot him. He thought, _Wouldn't that be nice._

The silence broke when he heard a loud buzzing noise and suddenly it seemed like the world had completely exploded all around him. There was a rush of pain as his entire body jerked at once, but before he could even comprehend how much it hurt, it was over and he was curled up on the floor, muscles twitching sporadically. Nick gasped, trying to pull breath into his suddenly airless lungs.

Barratt stood over him. There was something black in his hand, about the size of a cellphone. He scoffed. "Not so talkative now, are we?"

All Nick wanted, all he could think about was catching his breath again. His limbs spasmed uncontrollably and his tongue was a heavy weight in his mouth.

He'd never been tazed before. Now he understood why police used it.

Barratt kicked him, but he couldn't tell how hard. The guard's voice sounded low and muffled past the blood pounding in Nick's head. "Keep your fucking mouth shut. I've got no problems with watching you die." He turned and walked out of the cell, slamming the chain-link shut. Nick heard the padlock click into place, and the sound echoed in his brain for a long few moments afterwards.

He had never heard the facility be so quiet for so long.

* * *

A few hours passed before he was able to sit back up. It felt like he'd wrenched all of the muscles in his body. Every part of him felt like it was bruised, but the only marks he could find were the ones on his arm from the blood draw and a fresh one on his hip, where he assumed Barratt had kicked him. Nick slowly worked his way into the back corner and stayed there, staring at the chain-link. The walls had dried, but there were still small puddles scattered across the uneven floor.

The others all around him were making noises again. He tried to pick out individual words from the voices but in the heavy air it all seemed to be the same sound. Somewhere, something was rattling. Probably the air vent above him; he didn't want to lift his head to look.

Nick sat like that until it felt like his whole body had frozen to stone. It was too painful to move and too painful to sit still. He interlaced his fingers over the back of his head, pressing his eyes against his knees and breathing in the stuffy warmth generated by his own body. Every once in a while he would feel a tickle in his throat, but a cough would never surface.

The soft background hum of the others stopped when the door squealed again. He felt every part of his body stiffen in sudden, icy fear. Nick lifted his head just enough to look out to the corridor. There were footsteps, heavy boots on concrete. He let out a low, shivering breath.

A guard stepped into view. The flickering fluorescent lights threw a strange shadow over his face and breathing mask. Nick could tell by the hair who it was. He shrank back in the corner as much as he could, keeping his mouth shut.

Barratt let out a scoff, but it sounded like a growl behind the respirator.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Piece of shit." He shook the chain-link. It rattled loudly. "Open your mouth like that again, I'll zap you 'till you beat your own brains out on the floor. Understand?"

Nick didn't make eye contact. He stared at the floor and nodded.

Barratt scoffed again, and turned away, continuing his walk down the corridor. The noise of his boots hitting the concrete and small puddles echoed along the brick. Nobody spoke; it didn't even sound like anyone was daring to breathe.

The minutes stretched on and on as Barratt took a slow path down to the end of the room, then back up. He didn't pause in front of Nick's cell, or talk as he continued to the door. When it squealed open and shut, Nick was sure there hadn't ever been such a loud noise.

In the returning quiet, he swept his gaze slowly from side-to-side, tracing the door, the irregular puddles, the stains on the walls. The image would burn in his mind until the day he died.

* * *

There was no way of knowing exactly how long he'd been here. Every minute had felt like a day in the muted, gray stillness, the complete isolation from the world Nick had been pulled out of. The only thing he could do to pass time was study: the walls, the floors, the ceiling, the guards that walked in and out. The slowly healing bruises on his body.

The times where they took everyone out into the large room were the only time Nick got to see anyone besides the guards. He learned that this was when they cleaned the ward — the quarantine zone where he and the other carriers were kept. They didn't seem to be using anything but a hose and some bleach. It took ages for it to dry afterward.

A long time passed before he was able to move around without feeling exhausted. Even then, he couldn't do much but pace in a small circle a few times, and then he'd have to rest. So he filled his days with a comforting schedule of walking and resting, walking and resting. Over and over. He had to do something. Whenever he sat still for any amount of time, a strange, burning nagging would fill him, until he got up and moved.

The fourth time he was taken out to the large room while they cleaned, he spent the entire time walking around and around the perimeter, dragging one hand against the wall and cages as he passed. The others did what they always seemed to do; hold each other and talk.

Nick didn't want to talk.

He'd gone around twice before Carter spotted him and ran over. The older man looked much the same, perhaps a bit more tired. Nick wasn't sure he'd gotten tased yet.

"Hey. Hey! Damn, it's good to see you moving around. You look a lot better."

Nick shrugged. He kept walking.

"Man, slow down. Stop. I just want to talk a bit."

"What's there to talk about?" he asked, unsurprised by the hollow, lifeless tone of his own voice.

"I dunno. Everyone's wondering why that guard almost killed you last week."

Last _week?_ Carter obviously had a better grip of time than he did. He was so sure it had been at least a month.

"I opened my mouth. I wasn't supposed to," Nick answered. He didn't stop moving, until Carter grunted in frustration and grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to halt.

"Come on, man. Chill out."

Nick blinked slowly and turned to face him. The other man was a few inches shorter than him, now that he was standing up straight. He stepped from foot to foot. Already he was beginning to feel nervous from not walking.

Carter studied him for a long moment. "Keep it together. You're going to drive yourself insane if you keep it up." He motioned to the floor. "Sit down a minute."

For a few seconds, Nick considered it. Then he turned to walk again.

"No! _Seriously_," Carter hissed, grabbing his arm. "You remember Adrian? They took him, man. He was going crazy. All that talking and moving around he did. They'll do the same to you."

"I'm not sure I care," Nick answered. He couldn't remember saying anything so truthful in a long time.

"Hey, _I_ care. I don't want to watch you do this to yourself."

Now he was confused. "You don't even _know_ me."

Carter shook his head, and tugged Nick's arm again. "I don't care. Sit."

With a long sigh, he complied. The floor was dry, at least. He rubbed his hands over his head, feeling the harsh stubble of his regrowing hair under his palms.  
"...There. That's better." Carter sat down across from him. "Just sit down a while, okay? Take a few breaths. Calm down."

"I _am_ calm."

"No, no you aren't. I'm telling you, if you keep at that, you're going to lose yourself. That's what happened to Adrian. I can _hear_ you moving around at night."

There was a night here?

"They'll think you've lost your mind. And if they think you've lost your mind, they'll think you're turning into one of _those_. I'm sure you know what will happen next."

He wasn't sure what Carter was trying to do. Nobody gave a shit about him in here, after all. He quickly came to the conclusion that the older man was lying. He stood back up. "Just leave me alone. You don't even know my name."

Carter stared him straight in the eye. He was the first person to do so since he'd been with Kyle. Nick averted his own gaze, unable to keep eye contact. "Well, what's your name?" the older man asked. Nick could practically hear the indifference in his voice.

He mulled over his eventual answer for a long moment. "315," he said softly. "See you, 745." He turned and kept walking, and got four more laps before the guards brought them back into the quarantine ward.

* * *

More time passed. He never stopped pacing. If he did, he was sure he'd keel over and die. Eventually he'd pushed himself a bit too hard, and now he lay resting on his back with the bare parts of his arms underneath him, trying to keep the exposed parts as warm as he could. His joints got too painful with the chill. Just a few more minutes, then he'd be ready to move again.

The low murmur of the voices around him, a mixture of crying and low whispering and mumbling, seemed to get louder and louder with each passing moment. He was starting to enjoy it. Slowly catching his breath, he lay and stared up at the ceiling, at the rattling vent just outside the cell door. He was sure it was bringing in fresh air, and though he could never smell much of it, he could definitely _feel_ it. The back-right corner was the warmest spot in his little room, but staying curled up there for too long made his back hurt.

The harsh squeal of the quarantine door came from the far end of the block. It was the loudest thing that ever happened in this new world he was stagnating in. Nick pushed himself up on his arms and scooted away from the chain-link door. Barratt didn't like it when he lingered too close to the corridor.

There were two sets of footsteps outside. It was something he hadn't heard before. One of them was the slow, heavy sound of boots who he knew belonged to one of the guards... but the other was a soft clicking, like women's shoes. They came closer, pausing every few seconds. He heard murmured voices.

"Disgusting... how can you even..."

His hearing was either fading, or the brick walls were muting the noises for him.

The footsteps slowly trailed toward him and stopped at the end of his cell. Nick stared at the wall and didn't look. Barratt would kick him just for giving eye contact.

"What about this one?"

"Oh, that? That's 315."

"315. No, that's his identification number. What's his _name_?"

Nick slid his gaze from the wall to the floor, then over toward the outer corridor. He saw two sets of legs, one he paired with the male voice — Barratt — but the other he did not recognize. Female. She was wearing nice, spotless shoes.

"We don't know its name."

"How long has he been here?"

"Three weeks."

Had it really been that long already?

He heard the soft sound of crinkling fabric and watched as the woman crouched down on her haunches. She wore a face mask just like everyone else who walked into the quarantine area, but her eyes were visible. Dark and wrinkled.

"Dr. Sijan..."

"No, stop it. This ward is my responsibility now. I can do what I want."

Nick dropped his gaze back to her shoes and hugged his knees tighter.

The woman tapped the chain link with gloved fingers. "Hey, honey. What's your name?"

He didn't answer. Without a sound, he scooted further away from her, to the back corner of his cage. _Leave me alone_, he thought. _Please just leave me alone._ He turned his face and stared at the waste bucket across from him, hugging himself tighter. _Go away, go away, just go away._

"Has he ever talked?"

"Dr. Sijan. He — it ain't firing on all cylinders, if you get what I'm saying. Just walks in circles all the damn time."

He heard papers rustling. "Doesn't say anything about it in his chart."

Barratt sighed in frustration. "Give it a few minutes. You'll get a nice demonstration."

Nick pressed his eyes against his kneecaps. Having those _people_ so close to him was making him feel colder. He was so calloused to the terror that he wasn't sure if he was feeling more of it or not. But he wouldn't cry. He wouldn't break. He wouldn't give him that satisfaction. Nick gripped the back of his neck with his icy fingers and waited for the doctor to lose interest.

"His blood count is low," Sijan commented. "It was low when he came in. They're still pulling blood for vaccine trials from him?"

"I think they need the blood more than it does."

There was a loud scoff. "Mr. Barratt, I think this block has been due for some changes in management for a long time." The position of her voice moved. She was standing up. _Thank God_, Nick thought. "You treat these people like animals. Look at him. This is a _person_, Barratt. A _he_, not an _it. _Carrier or not, he shouldn't be participating in these trials with the blood count he has. You could kill him."

"Well, I think that..."

The woman's footsteps moved to and fro. "Have you noticed that he's below the intake vent? This is the coldest part of the room, Barratt. You're lucky he hasn't frozen to death." She began to walk off.

Nick raised his head and rested his chin on his knees. The corridor was empty again and he let out a short sigh of relief, rubbing his eyes. He made to move back to the warmer side of the cell.

Then the footsteps came back and he jolted, but the doctor was already back and she was unlocking the padlock keeping his cell shut. Barratt stood behind her and drew his pistol. Nick returned to the corner, like a dog that feared being beaten. The cell door squealed loudly.

The doctor walked right inside, despite the guard's warning against it. She didn't seem scared at all to approach him, while everyone else acted like he would attack them at any second. Nick turned his eyes away from her.

"It's okay, hon. I'm not going to hurt you."

The low, gentle tone of her voice was distorted by the face mask and Nick wasn't sure what she was supposed to sound like. He tried to make himself smaller but she came closer and draped something heavy and soft over his shoulders.

"Here. This should help with the cold, yes?"

Nick reached up and ran his fingers over it — a blanket. She'd given him a blanket.

"Dr. Sijan, I don't think that's..."

"I don't want to hear you complaining about it. How about you strip down into these ratty old clothes and sit in this cell all day and night? I'm sure you'll change your mind then."

A glove-covered hand brushed over the back of his head. He flinched.

"Maybe you'll tell me your name next time, yes?" Dr Sijan asked. Even with the facial mask, he thought he could hear the smile in her voice. "I'll talk to you again later."

As the cell door shut and the lock clicked back into place, Nick tugged the blanket tightly around himself. He hid his face in the fabric and cried.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Vicks._

_Next: The Catalyst, Part I.)_


	36. The Catalyst, Part I

She came back the next day. Nick was curled up in the corner with his blanket, resisting the urge to pace. No, getting warm was more important. He stared at the chain-link, imagining invisible patterns in it. On the other side of the block, someone was mumbling a repetitive string of syllables in a language he didn't know. He ran his fingers over the raised skin of his tattoo. _Not me_, he thought. _I'm not going to end up like that._

Then the quarantine door hissed and shrieked open. Nick blinked slowly. Barratt was doing his rounds again. This would be his second, which meant the food would come a little while after. His stomach roared just thinking about that disgusting slop.

The light clicking of shoes came to his ears and he lifted his head in time to see the woman doctor again, standing on the other side of the chain-link with a blue file in one hand and Barratt standing behind her. "Hello again," she said. There was a light accent in her words that Nick could not place. "I'm going to take you for some treatment now. I want to try and get your blood levels back up."

Nick stared at her feet, bracing himself against the wall as he obediently stood up. His muscles protested as he straightened himself out, and a push of vertigo made him sway.

Barratt walked up to the padlock, keys and a zip-tie in his hand. "All right, turn around. Just like last time."

It had been so long ago that he had nearly forgotten the procedure.

His eye traced the rust stains on the wall as Barratt stepped into the cell and bound his wrists together with the zip-tie. The man's vice-like grip clutched above his elbow and they were leading him out. The doctor walked ahead of them. She was quite a bit shorter than him. Stocky. He could see that her skin was dark and exotic. Her long hair was pulled into a ponytail and the ends of it curled at the back of her neck.

He felt the eyes of the other subjects falling on him as he walked slowly down the corridor. None of them spoke, save for whoever was mumbling; their stream of words never stopped for a moment. He couldn't believe Barratt hadn't beat the source half to death yet.

Nick noticed now that there were whiteboards installed above the cells with numbers written on them. He passed beneath 745, but didn't look at the person inside.

They took him to the same room as before, the one with the dentist's chair and locked cabinets full of supplies. Barratt cut the zip-tie long enough to lock him to the chair with another. Nick eased himself into a sitting position and kept his free hand in his lap.

"Do you remember my name?" The doctor asked.

Nick nodded once.

"You can look at me, you know. I'm not going to throttle you for it."

He kept his eyes downturned.

Barratt snorted. "You're wasting your time trying to talk to it, you know." He was taking his usual stance at the other side of the room, arms crossed. Watching. Ready to draw his pistol — or worse, the tazer — at the first sign of violence. "Brain's probably about as empty as 498's."

"Well, maybe he hasn't had a reason to say anything."

"Yeah, I doubt that."

The doctor came over with a tray of supplies. She leaned toward him, into his field of vision, her dark eyes seeking his out. Nick managed a small glance, a split-second of eye contact, then turned and looked at his hand attached to the chair instead.

"Ah, well, you looked at me, and that's a good start," she said. She reached out with her gloved hand and took his wrist, turning his arm over. It was the gentlest he'd ever been touched in this place. "I'm going to put an IV in you now, all right?"

He nodded again and was sure he could feel her smile.

The doctor was careful with her work. This time, instead of the IV draining blood from him, it was putting something in. His eye slowly followed the twisted line up to the bag. A bright red sticker had already marked it as contaminated. His number was written beneath it.

When she was done stringing up everything and getting him settled in, she sat down in the stool across from him and folded her hands over her lap. The heavy mask over her face concealed the smile that Nick could hear in her voice.

"I'm Heather Sijan. I'm the new supervisor of this facility. Namely, you and the others."

Nick nodded, and stared at the industrial latex gloves on her small hands.

"I know that things have been tough for you," she said. "I apologize for the way you have been treated. Things are going to change very soon." She gave a pointed glance to Barratt. "It's my understanding that much of this is regulation, but I think you are very important, and you should not be handled in the way you have."

The liquid in the IV bag dripped. Nick moved his eye to that and stared at it.

Sijan tilted her head and grabbed his file back up. She flipped through the pages, humming. "It doesn't say anything in here about your eye," she stated. "That happened a long time ago, didn't it?"

He nodded, and glanced up to see Barratt on the other side of the room crossing his arms with something like impatience or irritation.

The doctor followed Nick's gaze, then turned slowly back to him. "Are you frightened of him?"

He said nothing.

Sijan let out a small sigh. "Barratt, why don't you take a break for a while. Step outside for a few minutes."

"Doctor, you know I can't leave you alone in the room with a carrier."

She chuckled. It was a soft, pleasing sound despite the distortion of the mask. "I don't think he's going to try anything. He's chained to this chair and severely anemic. We're lucky he didn't pass out on his way here."

Barratt groaned. "I'm not taking responsibility if Central comes down on both our asses for this."

"They won't. It will be fine."

Nick rubbed at the back of his head, watching Barratt's feet as he stalked out of the room. The door clicked shut and he felt a sudden rush of relief. He blew out a tiny sigh through his nose.

Sijan rolled her chair a little closer to him. "There. That's much nicer, isn't it?" He was silent, so she kept talking. "I know how they've treated you. I know why you're scared." She took his hand again. Nick looked at it, concentrated on it, trying to understand what she was attempting to do. "I'm not going to let them treat you like that any more. You don't deserve that. Nobody deserves that."

Her gloved fingers rubbed on the inside of his palm, and then she reached up and settled her hand over the tattoo marked into his skin. "This isn't all you are. You are not just a number. Not to me. Do you understand?"

His eyes stung with the threat of tears, but he held them stubbornly back.

"They don't know how important you are. You... you could hold the answer to a cure and they shove you in that... that _cage, _under a drafty air vent. But not anymore. All right? I'm going to change it. You don't have to be cold anymore. You don't have to be afraid anymore."

Nick lifted his gaze up to the bottom edge of her mask, followed it carefully around to the bridge of her nose, then looked at her. There was nothing terrifying on her face, not a shred of hate or anger or fear that all of the others had. The wrinkles around her eyes became more apparent; deeper. She was smiling.

"It's going to be all right," she said.

Even if it was a complete lie, he had to believe it. If he didn't, he was going to break apart into a million pieces. And if that happened, he knew he would never be able to get himself back together again.

For a second, he rolled his tongue around in his mouth. Did he even know _how_ to talk anymore? "I'm..." he licked his lips. She stared expectantly at him. "Nick. My name. It's Nick."

Heather Sijan laughed. "It's a great pleasure to meet you, Nick."

For the first time in an eternity, he felt a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

* * *

A few hours after being placed back in the cell, he could tell the treatment was working. He could stand and move around for longer without feeling dizzy and weak. It wasn't much better, but it was _something_, and it had been a long time since he'd felt any excess of energy in his body. Nick walked back and forth for a long while, waiting for his body to wind down, but it didn't.

Unsure what to do, he settled back to the floor anyway, pulling the blanket around himself. His body urged him to keep moving. He didn't want to. He wanted to sit and be warm.

Five minutes later, he was pacing again.

Carter's voice echoed in his head and he pressed his palms into his eyes to try and get it to leave.

* * *

"His name is Nick."

Barratt nearly spat out the water that was in his mouth. "What? You got it to _talk_?"

_"Him_, Barratt. _Him_." Sijan pulled her mask off and took a deep breath of cool, filtered air. "It's amazing what you can do when you don't smack them around." She pushed her hands through her hair and walked past the guard without looking at him, readjusting her ponytail. "You should be ashamed of what you've done to him."

"Doctor, it's — _he's —_ a _carrier_."

"And? What makes him so much different than us?"

"Well, the fact that he can and will turn you into one of those monsters just by breathing on you is one of the biggest ones."

"Nonsense. Everyone knows it's only blood-borne, now."

"But there's nothing stopping it from mutating again." Barratt crossed his arms. "Remember the first days? Nobody could pin it down. I'm no scientist, Doctor, but I know a bit about viruses. It's just a matter of time. And who knows? It could mutate the _carriers_. How would you care for them, then?"

Sijan sighed, walking to the refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of water. "Well, I have faith that it won't mutate. It's been stable for this long. I think we're safe for now."

"Safe? You call living next door to those freaks _safe_?" Barratt shook his head. "Doctor, I've been here for three months. I've seen a lot of them come and go. They go crazy—"

"—Crazy, because they're kept in that _dump_, in _isolation—_"

"—They get unpredictable. It can't be helped. You know that." He was looking straight at her now. Worry traced his features. "Doctor. I'm telling you. They _can't be trusted_. Not 315. Not any of them. Give him enough chances, he'll turn on you. I guarantee it."

Sijan frowned. "He wouldn't. I know him better than that."

"Do you? 'Cause until five minutes ago, you didn't even know his name."

"Did anyone even ask him what it was?"

Barratt pushed a hand through his hair and hissed in frustration. "Look, I just want you to be more careful. Coddle them or give them blankets or flowers or whatever, but _don't turn your back on them_. I'm serious. You can't trust a carrier."

Sijan recapped her water bottle. "And who trusts you, Barratt?" Her heels clicked on the floor as she left for her quarters.

* * *

"All right, cleaning day! Everyone up," one of the guards hollered as he walked down the corridor. "Up, up, up. Get moving!"

Nick was ready at the cell door when the guard approached. It wasn't Barratt. He wondered why the other guard wasn't around, but shrugged it off as soon as he was in the large holding room. For the first time in ages, he ran. The last time he could remember doing so was back when he'd fought the Charger in Pennsylvania. Around and around. The others stared at him as he passed.

Carter tried to speak to him. He ignored the older man's voice.

"Not right now," Nick said, enjoying the brush of air against his face. He wished he could go faster. The feeling was intoxicating. He felt free. _Alive._ He pushed himself until his ribs began to ache, but still kept going. He ran until he could no longer breathe, and only then did he finally stop, leaning over his knees, panting with short, sporadic gasps.

It took only a few seconds for Carter to catch up with him.

"Man, what are you _doing_?"

"Running," Nick wheezed. "Feels good."

"Well, you gotta stop. I'm sure the only thing those guards hate more than a crazy carrier is a strong one." The older man crouched down, trying to catch his eye. "And you _still_ don't sound that great. Your breathing. I remember. Back in the truck? You sounded like you were dying in there."

"I'm not." Nick felt a hitch in his breath and coughed. His ribs flared in pain. It wasn't bad, not as awful as the tazer, but he'd had enough experience. It would get worse and worse. "I'm fine," he said anyway. To his own ears, his voice sounded quiet and hollow; unconvincing. Even without any of the guards around, talking made him nervous.

"Man, your first time in here you couldn't even _walk._"

"I'm getting better."

"Listen, I know you're trying to build your strength back up. It's good, but are you... trying to get out?"

Nick rubbed his face. "I'm trying to run, 745."

"Carter. My name's Carter."

He didn't reply to that. With a wince, he straightened up, pressing his hand against his ribs. He let out a short breath, and started off again at a slow walk.

"You're going to kill yourself. Or get yourself killed," the older man called after him.

Nick stopped short. His mind went back to a hotel, warm and welcome. A teenager he thought he'd forgotten about. _You're gonna kill yourself._ His own reply, harsh and indifferent. Sean. The kid's name had been Sean. Had he really forgotten that?

He sighed and rubbed his forehead, tracing one of the scars.

Carter stepped up next to him. "You okay?"

"...Yeah." Nick shook his head. "Tired, I guess."

"Good. Sit down. Take a break. Don't hurt yourself."

So he sat down on the concrete, leaning against the wall. He let his eyes skip over the others, for once actually looking at them. They all looked about the same. Thin, pale, sickly. Some of them continued to stare at him, until losing interest and going back to whatever it was they were doing before.

Carter sat down on his blind side, and Nick rolled his eyes and stood back up, waving the older man down when he starting telling him not to. He moved around to the other side and settled back down.

"Prefer to be able to see you," he explained, pointing needlessly at his left eye.

"Understandable. What happened to it?"

"Don't wanna talk about it."

Carter shrugged slightly. "That's fine. You don't have to." He settled his arms on his knees. "You meet the new doctor? She gave everyone blankets, can you believe that?"

Nick hummed noncommittally. "Nicer, I guess."

"Yeah. She drew my blood the other day, actually talked to me." He held out his arm. "She didn't bruise me all up, either."

"...I had anemia. She's treating it," Nick said, rubbing the top of his head.

"That's why you were so sick, huh?"

"Partially." He didn't elaborate, and Carter didn't press him for information. It was both disheartening and relieving; he was torn between _wanting_ someone to show interest in him and his old instinct of not wanting to talk about himself.

They sat quietly for the rest of their stint in the holding room. The guard came back, the same one as before. Nick began to wonder again where Barratt had gone, but the thought was quickly smothered by his preference that he _not_ be dragged around by the much larger man. He wasn't sure he'd seen this guard before or not, but the man handled everyone calmly and with a surprising gentleness. Instead of throwing Nick into his cell as quickly as he could, he walked him inside and left without a harsh word or glare.

He went and leaned against the chain-link, peering down the corridor to watch as the guard came and went with the other carriers. There were no threats given to anyone, not even Nick, who had been screamed at multiple times just for being close to the guards.

The change was interesting, but he didn't mull too long over it. He'd rather have _that_ guard than the man who'd tased him. Hell, he'd rather have _Gregory_.

It was a name he hadn't thought of in ages. The memory brought fuzzy images of dead bodies and the smell of rot to his mind, and it chilled him. Nick, for the first time in days, abandoned his schedule of pacing to sit under the blanket and think.

* * *

A slamming noise yanked him from a fragile sleep. As always, he had no idea what the time or day was, but the constant disorientation was starting to become familiar. He knew that wasn't a good sign.

Nick sat up from the floor where he'd been curled up, twisted in the blanket. He left it on the concrete as he moved to the end of his cell. For a few minutes he thought it might have been a dream that woke him, but then the quarantine door shrieked open and the noise of screaming blasted through the ward.

It was a man, being held by a pair of guards. Neither of them were Barratt, because Nick knew that Barratt wouldn't be calmly escorting anyone anywhere, like these two were.

Nick shifted himself closer to the chain-link, watching closely as they walked the new person inside. He was shaved, tattooed, dressed in the same clothes, and in a state of absolute panic. Thrashing and shouting, he was pulled into the corridor. He looked around wildly, taking in the cells and drain and flickering lights. For a split-second, he looked at Nick, but then he was being pulled away, toward the cell directly across the corridor. It had been empty up until now.

The guards pushed the struggling man in, and slammed the door shut behind him. He whirled and grabbed the chain-link, sobbing and yelling.

"Oh Jesus Christ, please! _Please!_ Don't leave me in here! Don't _fucking leave me in here_!"

He was in complete panic, shaking the cell door as he howled at the retreating guards. They took no notice of him, and left without speaking.

Nick watched him claw at the wire, hysterical. He kept at it for a long few minutes, then collapsed to the floor, wailing. He stuck his fingers under the cell door, trying to lift it. Nothing happened. He shook it violently again. Nothing.

"Goddammit! _Goddammit!_ I don't deserve this, you fuckers! You fucking monsters!" The man continued. He got up and started cursing and pacing at the front of his cell, face red and eyes wet.

The noise was beginning to make Nick nervous. "Jesus, will you _shut up_?" he hissed across the corridor.

The stranger immediately fell quiet, panting as he looked for the source of the words. He finally met Nick's eyes and shook the cell door again, looking like a wild animal caught in a bear trap.

"Who are you? Where the fuck am I?!"

"CEDA facility," Nick answered softly. "You didn't read the sign?"

"They — they fucking _dragged_ me in here. Fucking attacked me out of nowhere and brought me in!" He rattled the chain again and screamed incomprehensibly before shrieking, "_What the fuck is this?!_"

Nick pressed the back of his head against the wall. He greatly missed the static hum of the ward. "You better settle down," he murmured, knowing exactly who he sounded like. "...They don't like a lot of noise."

"I don't give a _fuck_! I want the fuck out of here!"

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, idly wondering when that attitude had disappeared from himself.

The new man started to throw himself at the chain-link, repeatedly. He made feral noises, howling and grunting. The door didn't budge, but he kept doing it.

Nick went back to the warm corner of his cell and wrapped himself back up in the blanket.

"Let me out of here! _Let me out!_"

The man continued screaming. He didn't stop for a moment. Nick cupped his hands over his ears and sighed. Of all the places to put a loud asshole, it had to be directly across from _him_. He couldn't even hear himself think over all the noise.

Then, the quarantine door opened. Nick felt himself stiffening on instinct and removing his hands from his ears. He hugged his knees and stared at the wall, praying that it wasn't who he thought it was.

Barratt's voice roared through the corridor. "Who's making all the fucking noise in here?!"

Nick didn't dare to even breathe. He bit down on the inside of his cheek and kept absolutely still.

The new man started up. "You'd better let me the fuck out of here! I'm going to fucking _kill you_!"

"Ah, is that so?" The guard's voice had gone calm.

Nick interlaced his fingers behind his head.

"Why are you doing this? _Why?! _What the fuck did I _do?_"

"You're a carrier," Barratt explained. "You're here to make a vaccine."

"_Fuck_ your vaccine!"

The guard hummed. "I'm going to be nice here, give you a chance to calm the fuck down and be quiet. Are you going to do that for me?"

Nick heard the noise of someone sucking in and then spitting.

For a few seconds, there was only total silence. He didn't look.

Then, the jingle of keys, the click of a padlock. The new person snarling threats. Barratt's heavy boots on the concrete. Nick knew what was coming. The loud hissing crackle of the tazer coming to life, the _snap_ of it connecting with a body. Then, agonized screaming.

The tazer went off again, and again, and again, until the screaming stopped.

Nick's own heartbeat sounded obnoxious in his ears. He didn't move.

"I told you to keep fucking quiet," Barratt growled. His voice was like a shout in the silence of the ward. "Your doctor might think you're all innocent, but I know better. I've seen you animals at work. Start up again... it won't just be the stun gun. Do you understand?"

Nick only heard rapid panting.

"_Do you fucking understand me?_"

"...Yes. ...I—I underst-stand."

"Good. Here's your fucking blanket."

Barratt's boots slammed on the concrete. The cell door closed and locked. The guard paused for a second outside in the corridor, only a few feet away. Nick stayed frozen, and kept staring at the floor. The guard scoffed, then he could hear him walking away, and Nick didn't even blink until he heard the quarantine door open and close. Even after that, he waited a long while before daring to move and take a look at the cell across the way.

The other man was trying to get back up. His whole body was quaking. Nick could see a crumpled blanket on the floor next to him; Nick tugged his own close around his shoulders. Then he sat at the end of his cell, watching carefully.

"Fucking assholes," the new man hissed. "...Gonna kill every last one of 'em." With a strained groan, he sat up. His hand found the blanket next to him. Nick watched him tug it into his lap, then spread it out on the floor. He stretched out on it, and the silence settled back in around them.

* * *

Nick hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep again until a dream pulled him out of it. The sound of a dog barking and someone screaming faded into the back of his head as the damp gray walls of his cell came into focus. He lowered his eyes and stared at the floor, seeing the blanket had fallen away, leaving the bare skin of his arms to chill in the air. Nick shivered and started rubbing them as he gathered the blanket back up again.

"Hey." A sharp voice hissed across the corridor. "Hey."

He turned and looked to see the newcomer, still the cell across from him, pressed up against the chain-link and staring at him like he were some kind of strange new animal.

Nick lifted a hand and waved at him vaguely.

The stranger gave him a thin smile, lips stretching over clean, white teeth. "Hey. What's your name?"

Instead of answering, he hooked a finger into the chain-link to point upward; at the whiteboard installed above his cell where his number had been written. He saw the other man's, too; _C-909-026. _An idle question hovered in his mind: where did they come up with the numbers? Maybe it was random.

"That's not your name," 909 said. "That's... that's just that bullshit number they tagged you with."

"Close enough," Nick mumbled under his breath.

909 scoffed. "I can't hear you. Speak louder."

He didn't say anything else. Nick pulled his blanket around his shoulders and stared at the wall as he continued to rub at his arms, trying to get warmer.

"Can't you just talk to me? It's... it's so quiet in here. Please..."

Nick leaned the back of his head against the wall, not looking at him. "Don't want to talk," he said, keeping his voice as low as he could. "...They don't like it." He glanced toward the quarantine door, expecting it to open and Barratt to come storming out.

"I don't want to be here," 909 whimpered. "Oh, God, I don't want _to be here_." He started to cry softly, leaning against the chain-link and staring across the corridor. "Why are they doing this?"

Nick sighed and gathered up his blanket as he retreated to the warmer corner of his cell.

"Hey. Hey! Don't—don't ignore me. Please don't ignore me. Please!"

He tugged the blanket tightly around his shoulders and settled in, keeping his gaze on the wall and his mouth shut. 909 continued to try and get his attention, getting progressively louder and louder. Nick put his hands over his ears and curled up, hiding his face half in the blanket.

It took about ten minutes for the quarantine door to open again. Nick pressed his palms tighter against his ears until he could hear only the barest murmur of noise, and stared at the floor — through the floor — as the distant sounds of screaming and the _snap_ of the tazer filtered through to his brain. As always, he didn't move or speak. Nick didn't want to see what Barratt was doing; he didn't want the same treatment.

He couldn't block out enough of the sounds with his hands over his ears. Nick knew exactly what he was hearing. He imagined he could smell the burning ozone from the tazer, but it was probably his mind providing the scent for him. Air didn't travel well in the ward.

A different noise began to seep into his eardrums. Higher, not an agonized scream, but a voice yelling in anger or fear. Too high to be a man. Nick only knew two women which worked here, and there was only one of them he'd seen more than a few times. He swallowed a few times before lifting his hands away from his ears marginally.

"— Barratt! Barratt, stop it! I said _stop_!" It was Sijan, her accented voice shouting over the noise of 909's screams. "I'm telling you to stop!"

Very slowly, Nick lifted his eyes from the floor and let his gaze creep over the wall, toward the corridor, as if looking at them would be enough to redirect the violence to himself. There were three people in 909's cell. The carrier was on the floor, Barratt bent over him, and Sijan yanking at the guard's arm and shoulder. Barratt finally stopped and stood up straight. He turned toward the doctor and Nick saw that his breathing mask had been knocked slightly off-kilter. There was nothing exposed, but even from the other side of the corridor he could see the rage in the guard's eyes.

Sijan shoved him back, away from 909. "Get out. Get _out_ of here, Barratt." There was a fury in her voice that Nick didn't know could exist. "Right now. Get to the decontamination room and stay there. Now! Get out of my ward!"

Nick looked away as Barratt turned with a snarling sigh and stalked to the quarantine door. When it had closed shut again, Nick lifted his head and looked to see what was going on.

Sijan was on her knees next to 909, who was flat on his stomach on the floor. Nick could see the fingers of his right hand twitching. His right leg was kicking out, toes scraping on the concrete floor. Sijan was speaking to him in hushed tones, but he wasn't replying to her. She pulled something out of her pocket — for a second Nick thought it was another tazer but then she lifted it to her mouth and spoke into it, and he realized it was a radio.

"This is Sijan. I'm going to need a gurney in the quarantine ward. For Matthew Garcia—" she sighed and grabbed his arm, "—909-026."

Nick heard the garbled reply of whoever was on the other side of the radio and watched as Sijan turned 909 over and tilted her ear toward his mouth. She shook her head and rolled up the sleeves of her white lab coat, then placed one hand over the other on 909's chest and started performing CPR.

He stared, wondering why he was so surprised to see what she was doing. It struck him as a strange thing, for someone uninfected to do something like that to a carrier. At some point his mind corrected him; they weren't an _uninfected_ and a _carrier_. They were two _human beings_. Separated only by a few random genes. Was that how Sijan saw it?

A few minutes passed before the quarantine door opened and two guards pushed in a rickety rolling gurney. Neither of them were Barratt. Nick, feeling more brave without the other guard around, scooted closer to the corridor to see.

They put 909 on the gurney and started wheeling him out. As his body went under the fluorescent lights, Nick could see the blood pouring from his blackened face; his nose and mouth and ears. He wasn't breathing or moving. Sijan rushed behind them as they hurried down the corridor and out the quarantine room, leaving 909's cell open. The carrier's blanket lay twisted on the floor, smeared with blood.

He never came back.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Vicks._

_Up next: The Catalyst, Part II. Thanks for reading!)_


	37. The Catalyst, Part II

Barratt never came back, either.

Nick was still sitting in front of the chain-link for hours after 909 was taken out, fingers curled against the wire. He watched with distant interest as a thin trail of the carrier's blood ran slowly down the slope toward the drain in the middle of the corridor. It ran sluggishly along the uneven concrete. The overhead lights made it seem darker than it probably was, a deep red line tracking slowly toward him.

The air vent rattled above his head, but the rest of the ward was silent. It usually was after Barratt lashed out in violence. Nick's gaze followed the red trail of blood back up to the carrier's twisted, discarded blanket, then down again. It had reached the edge of the drain, and he watched as it dripped slowly into the wastewater below.

The quarantine door squealed. Nick retreated to the back corner again, taking his blanket with him, fearing the worst — that Barratt was going to come back in and finish them all off.

Instead, two other guards came in. He'd seen them before; they were the quiet ones that didn't throw him around. They spoke softly, but not kindly to Nick and the others — it often sounded like they were talking to things that weren't really there. Hollow and impersonal. He wasn't sure what to think of it.

They came up to the door of 909's cell. One of them looked down at the blood on the floor and motioned for the other to stop.

"Hey. Watch this," he said, pointing down at it.

Nick watched closely as they took long steps around the blood, skirting past it like one would a poisonous animal. The other guard pulled the radio from his back pocket and spoke into it.

"Ward B. Whole-blood contamination."

They kept going down the corridor and Nick couldn't hear the reply, if there was one. He crept back to the chain-link door and watched them for as long as the awkward viewpoint allowed. There was the sound of the other door opening and a breath of icy air swept down the ward, and then they were opening cells and taking everyone out, guiding them to the holding room.

Nick was the last to go, being the one at the furthest end of the ward. He watched them step around the blood and open his cell door.

"Come on, Nick," one of them said, and he was so slow to realize that it was his name that it startled him and he forgot what he was supposed to do. The closest one grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the hall, voice impatient. "This way."

Hearing his name spoken aloud by_ them _was strange and frightening. He struggled to understand. All they'd ever called him was a number, an object, an _it_. That was all he was when he was in his cell — in his _cage_.

They brought him to the holding room with the others and left him standing there, shivering and bewildered. He watched the door to the ward shut and pushed his hands across his hair before sitting on the floor right where he was.

It didn't take long for Carter to find him and place a tentative hand on his shoulder. "Hey. You okay?"

Nick nodded jerkily. "Yeah."

"Jesus. Thought for a minute that _you _were the one getting beat. Almost had a heart attack."

He sighed and wondered what made him so much more important than anyone else. They were all the same, weren't they? That was what they had been told many times before. Nick sighed, shaking his head and pressing his palms into his eyes. At length, he spoke into his hands, "They called me my name."

Carter sat down next to him, keeping his hand on his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"My name. My actual fucking name."

The older man fell silent for a second. "You still have it, you know. If you remember it, you still have it. They haven't taken it from you." He patted Nick's shoulder. "It's okay. They're calling everyone by their names now."

Nick curled his legs up to his chest, breathing slowly, waiting to see if his mind could recalibrate itself with this new information. He pushed a hand against his forehead and let out a long breath.

"...They didn't know your name, did they?" Carter asked, at length, hesitation in his voice.

"Never asked me." Nick chewed on one of his knuckles as his mind raced. He had thought that in here, they were just empty things in perpetual and useless motion. Tools. Nothing else. No matter how many blankets they gave him or names they called him, it wasn't going to change.

Was it?

Nick let out a long breath and pushed himself gingerly to his feet. He walked to the back wall and leaned against it, then slowly slid down to the floor, resting his head in his hands and listening to the others mumble about what had happened.

"...Guess the guard beat him real bad—"

"—Only a matter of time 'till they get the rest of us—"

"—I wish we could leave. I wish we could just leave. Why won't they let us _leave_?"

Nick pushed his hands across his still-short hair. It was coming back, albeit slowly. There was enough to run his palms over, at least, even though it felt like uneven beard stubble. He stared at the ground, trying to get the memory of 909's muffled shrieks out of his head, imagining that he'd heard words in the muddled mess of sounds.

The others kept talking, voices soft and scared.

"Should have shot myself in that safe house before they found me."

"We'll get out of here. Don't worry. We'll get out."

He wasn't really listening. It was all a distant burst of static to his ears.

Carter was eventually walked over and sat next to him. Neither spoke. A hiss started up on the other side of the door. They were cleaning the ward again. The faint smell of harsh chemicals drifted into the holding room. Nick tried not to let the sound of the spray remind him of a ship's corridors soaking in seawater.

"Probably cleaning the blood out," the older man said. "That's how it's spread, you know."

"...Yeah." Nick ran the underside of his thumb along his fingernails. "I know."

After a lengthly stretch of uncomfortable silence, Carter spoke again. "You can tell me what it is, you know. Your name." Nick wasn't sure if he could hear anything genuine in the man's voice or if the facility had beaten it out of him. "I'd sure like to stop calling you 315."

He didn't say anything in reply. Not for a long time, not until Carter had sighed and turned away and lost interest in trying to continue the conversation. Then Nick finally opened his mouth, speaking quietly, as if he were giving away a secret.

"I'll make you a deal, 745." He rubbed his face and stood up again, feeling uncomfortable, twitchy — he needed a run. "How about that?"

"A deal is better than nothing," Carter replied carefully, looking up at him from the floor.

"...We make it out of here... then I'll tell you my name. Got it?"

Carter scoffed. The both of them knew that there was no leaving the facility. Still, a sad little smile spread across his face, and he nodded softly. "All right. You've got yourself a deal, 315." He extended his hand out.

Nick stared at it for a long moment.

"Shake it," Carter supplied quietly. "You make a deal with a man, you shake his hand."

"...Yeah." Nick grabbed it — it was much warmer and stronger than his own — and gave it as firm a shake as he could manage.

The other man smiled, looking him straight in the eye. "I'm looking forward to it."

* * *

When they were returned to their cells, the walls and floors were soaking wet. There was still some off-color cleaner bubbling and frothing in the drain. It smelled like ammonia.

909's cell was empty again — blanket gone, whiteboard wiped clean, floor bare. Like he'd never existed. Their blankets were hanging from the chain-link cell doors, also dripping with water. There wasn't a dry spot anywhere in his cell, so Nick stood in the corner, rubbing his arms and trying to keep warm. They'd cleaned the blankets and it was going to take ages for them to be dry and usable. He'd long gotten used to the smell anyway.

Nick started pacing, since he couldn't sit or lay down without getting wet. He balled both of his hands into fists, remembering how strong Carter's handshake had been and internally questioning how long his own fingers had been so weak. No wonder his rifle had been getting so hard to manage.

The quarantine door shrieked open and Nick nearly slipped and fell on the wet floor in his haste to get to the far corner of his cell. He stood there and looked at the wall, staring at the rust stain that he had memorized long ago and trying to look as harmless as possible.

He heard the crinkling of a trash bag and realized he'd forgotten how close it was to his meal. His sense of time was skewed beyond repair. He still didn't know if it was day or night. _Because there is no day or night anymore_, that wild, frenzied part of his mind told him. He couldn't keep it quiet anymore. _Just meal one and meal two._

This would be meal one. A guard came around and rolled a bottle of water under his cell door and he picked it up. They weren't ever sealed; he suspected after they collected the empty bottles they just filled them again with whatever water they had. There were small particles floating in it this time. The sight might have turned his stomach, ages ago. But now he opened it and took a long sip without hesitation, letting the water swish around in his mouth for a while. It was lukewarm and tasted a bit like chlorine.

After the water they came around with food. This time it was granola, from a large surplus bucket with a horse on the label. The guard grabbed a handful and put it in a coffee filter that served as the plate before sticking it carefully under the door.

Nick ate slowly, as always. It wasn't anything special, he knew, but he was _hungry_, and he ate it piece-by-piece until there was nothing left but a fine dust over the bottom of the coffee filter. He rolled the thin paper into a ball between his palms, busying his hands and listening to the faint sounds of his stomach as it worked on digesting the tiny meal.

His energy returned, and he started to pace. He unrolled the coffee filter and started folding it into different shapes as he moved. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep his mind occupied, to keep it from falling into bubbling panic or that buzzing, hollow emptiness. Neither of them were pleasant.

Distant memories came and went, fuzzy and intangible. He thought of Rochelle, wondered where she was or what she was doing. And Ellis and Coach. They were smart and there wasn't a chance they'd ended up in a place like this, he thought. After all, they were together. He'd just had a stupid, obnoxious dog.

Nick tried not to think about Rob. Thinking about it made him angry. Angry at Kyle, angry at the dog. Mostly he just hated himself. For not paying attention. For being lulled into a sense of trust. He'd thought he was better than that, smarter than that.

_Worthless, worthless_, his mind said.

The coffee filter was starting to disintegrate from being manipulated for so long. Nick started ripping it up into pieces. When he just had a handful of confetti he went to the waste bucket and let it drop in, watching it drift through the air like snow.

His mind ate at itself. He paced, and tried to think. He paced, and tried to stop thinking.

Neither worked.

* * *

"All right, Nick. Ready to go to the treatment room?"

The voice roused him from his rest on the floor. He hadn't been sleeping, just gazing into space, unable to do anything else. Nick rubbed his face and looked up at the guard looming at the cell door.

"...What?"

The guard held up a file — the blue file that he knew belonged to him. Everyone had a blue file. "The doctor would like to pull some samples from you."

Nick tilted his head. They were supposed to be treating him — not taking things back out of him. He levered himself to a standing position anyway, shying to the back corner as the guard jammed the key into the padlock.

"You gonna cooperate, or do you need the zip-tie...?"

There was a choice? Nick blinked slowly and shook his head. The guard took a step inside his cell and grabbed him by the arm, above the elbow, like Barratt had. This man's fingers weren't tight enough to bruise. They walked silently down the ward. Nick lifted his eyes timidly, catching Carter's gaze as he was escorted past the older man's cell. There was no emotion there that he could discern.

The treatment room was still only a few degrees warmer than the ward. Nick noticed immediately that the dentist's chair was no longer here, replaced by a heavy metal table, like something out of a morgue. The guard motioned for him to sit on it before knocking on the door to the outer hallway.

Nick rested his hands on the top of the table. It was freezing cold, colder than his cell. Anxiety was creeping up in his mind again, bringing with it wild visions of what might happen next. Were they going to kill him? Or were they really just taking samples?

The outer door hissed open and Sijan stepped inside. She was probably smiling, but he couldn't see her mouth past the mask. "Good evening, Nick."

So it was the evening. He tried to plant it into his memory.

Sijan retrieved his file from the hands of the other guard. "We won't be taking blood from you today," she spoke, gently. "What we're going to be taking is bone marrow. Are you familiar with this procedure?"

Nick had only heard about it a few times in his life. He shook his head. It sounded painful.

"Well..." she set his file down and folded her hands in front of herself, trying to maintain eye contact as she spoke, "...we're going to give you a bit of a sedative. You'll lay down on that table and we'll pull the sample, hopefully from your hip. Shouldn't be too bad. Okay?"

He still wasn't sure how to talk around her. It didn't matter which guard was standing next to him; in his mind he would always see Barratt. "Um. Is it — will it hurt?" His voice cracked slightly. He couldn't look at her any longer, so he shifted his gaze to the floor.

"A bit," she said.

Nick didn't like the idea of sedatives. He thought back to the movie theater where he'd been out of it for hours and could barely remember what the hell had happened... not to mention the incident with Kyle. "Are you g—gonna... put me out? Knock me out?"

"We'll just give you something to help with the pain, keep you calm."

He knew he didn't really have a choice, and wasn't sure why she was explaining it instead of strapping him down and just getting on with it. At least they were decent enough to give him some form of pain relief. Nick rubbed the back of his neck and nodded again. He thought of all the other hospitals he'd been to, how many consent forms he'd signed in his life.

They'd never made him sign anything in here. He supposed his 'consent' was being allowed to get shipped into the facility in the first place.

Sijan was talking again. He shook his head and struggled to focus. It was becoming maddening, how often his mind would lose itself and just phase out. He couldn't concentrate on anything anymore.

"I'm going to get your sedative and the instruments," she said, going back to the door that led out to the uninfected side of the facility. "Just wait here, Nick. I'll only be a moment."

He sat in uncomfortable silence, staring at the boots of the guard standing next to him. There were goosebumps on his arms and he rubbed at them, shivering. His gaze shifted to his own raw, bruised feet. Nick assumed he and the other carriers didn't get shoes because they might kill themselves with the laces. Or kick each other with them.

The guard shifted and Nick could hear the man's clothes creaking softly in the quiet of the room. He also heard him sigh quietly, though whether it was a sound of boredom or irritation was up for debate. Nick tilted his arm and traced the numbers again, one of the many nervous habits he'd picked up. _Three-one-five, zero-two-four,_ he'd whisper in his mind, over and over.

After a couple more minutes of thick frozen silence, the quarantine door opened again and he let out a small breath of mixed anxiety and relief through his nose. Sijan came in with a surgical tray with some mostly unfamiliar things piled up on top of it. Nick glanced over them; vials and gloves and bottles, but he didn't like the look of the thing with the large blue handle and impossibly long needle. It looked like a construction worker's tool.

Another guard came in behind her and shut the door. Nick attempted to swallow his fear of being trapped in such a small space with so many people.

"All right, Nick." Sijan was drawing up something from a vial. A drug. She flicked out the bubbles in the syringe and came over with it. "This is just a little propofol. It's gonna make this nice and easy for you, hon."

He wasn't sure he'd ever heard of propofol before, and he wasn't excited for the prospect of being sedated. Nick recoiled, but the guard that had been standing next to him reached out and snatched his arm for her. He watched, shaking, as she tied a band around his arm and soaked his skin with alcohol. There were still fading bruises from the last time, and although it looked like she was being careful, it still hurt like hell as she started fishing around for a vein.

Nick saw the flash of his blood in the syringe and heard her say, "Here we go," before she started injecting. It was painful, a strange burning sensation in his veins that reminded him of the diazepam but _hot_. Sijan pushed it through and withdrew the needle, patting him lightly on the knee. "Just give it a minute."

For a few moments it didn't seem like it was doing anything, but then the horrifying feeling of dizziness swept over him, and he was reminded instantly of Kyle. The drugs. Rob. Nick's mind rolled with panic, but his body wouldn't respond. He tried to slip down off the table but one of the guards grabbed him and put him back, pushing his chest until he was lying flat on the icy metal. The guard stayed over him, holding him down, and the terror snowballed, boiled up faster and faster in his head and his body—

Somewhere in his mind he swore he felt something shift, crumple and shatter. His heart shot up into his throat and the only thought he had in his head was _get away get out get out of there get out get out get out—_

He started thrashing weakly, trying to break free of the hands holding him down.

"Just the excitatory stage," he heard Sijan mutter. It sounded like she was very far away. "Hold him still. He'll be fine in a few minutes."

Nick bucked a few more times, but then he lost his strength and he felt himself going slack. It felt like something had just sucked all the energy out of him, leaving him limp and useless. His mind was still going, still aflame with hysteria, but he couldn't fight back any more, couldn't lift his arms or kick his legs or scream or yell. _Let me go. I don't want this. I don't _want this,he cried in his head, but his actual voice wouldn't make any noises.

"...There." Sijan was talking again. She sounded impossibly loud to his ears. "Just relax, Nick. This will only take a minute. Promise."

They rolled him over and Sijan started applying something wet and cold to his lower back. He couldn't tell what it was, nor could he turn his head and look at what it was. One of the guards held his arms down and the other was leaning on his legs. Nick tried to breathe past the panic. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack.

"Just a little pinch," the doctor spoke lightly, then it felt like he was being stabbed by a kitchen knife, deep in his lower back. He couldn't yell or scream although he wanted to; all he could do was breath harshly and fight with his uncooperative body to _move._

"Almost done," Sijan spoke. "You're doing great."

It seemed to last forever, the feeling like she was twisting a knife into him. He felt tears coming out from his eyes but couldn't wipe them away or stop them from appearing. His heart was going to explode, he just knew it, it was going to beat right the fuck out of his chest and he'd be dead, right there on the table.

He heard a low whimpering noise and it took him a few seconds to realize it was coming from his own throat.

"Shh," the doctor hissed softly. "You're gonna be fine."

Finally, _finally_, the pressure of the needle relented. He felt a heavy breath shudder out from his lungs. The pain remained, but it wasn't nearly as terrible. Nick's face was pressed into the metal table and the surface was slick with tears. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a massive syringe in the doctor's hands, filled with a dark reddish substance. She moved it to the counter, then turned back to him.

"All done. See how easy that was?"

Nick wanted to laugh, but he couldn't make the sound. _Easy?_ She thought it was _easy?_ Anger mingled with the terror and made a strange, white-hot feeling bubble in his chest. Of course she would think it was _easy_, she wasn't the one kept in a freezing cold cage with a damp blanket and two meals a day. She probably had never encountered a zombie; she had no idea what _easy_ was.

His breathing was beginning to slow, and he willed his heart to do the same, squeezing his eyes shut and resting his forehead against the freezing table. The panic was still ricocheting around in his head like a nagging, terrible headache. The guards removed their hands from his arms and legs and he tried to move them, but they felt heavy and clumsy.

"You can take him back, now," he heard Sijan say. Nick wasn't sure if it was the drugs or his own mind playing with him, but she sounded angry. A tone of voice not unlike Barratt's. His mind, already in overdrive, tried to understand, tried to come up with a reason for it, but it could only tell him, _She's lying to you, she's lying, she doesn't give a shit, none of them do, and you fell for it you fell for her _con—

One of the guards was lifting him up by his arms. "All right, let's get going," he said, and levered him down to the floor. His legs felt like rubber and he clung to the guard's arm to stop himself from collapsing.

The other one took his other arm, and they helped him back to his cell, setting him down carefully on the concrete. They threw the still-damp blanket over him and left, locking the chain-link door behind them. Nick curled up as tightly as he could, trembling with fading panic and anger, and let the drugs pull him into sleep.

* * *

His back hurt for days. There was no outward sign that he'd even been touched except for the fading orange stain of iodine and a tiny band-aid. He couldn't see much of it, anyway. It still hurt when he sat down or lay on his back.

As it turned out, Sijan had taken samples from all of them. Nick didn't think of that possibility until the next cleaning day, when he saw another carrier rubbing his back in the holding room, and when Carter sat next to him in their usual spot and asked, "How's yours doing?"

"Sore as hell," Nick answered after a second, resisting the urge to rub it again.

"Wish I could get more of those drugs they gave me. Haven't slept so good in months." The older man leaned against the wall, pillowing his hands behind his head. He looked so casual, like he wasn't really in a testing facility forcibly getting fluids taken out of him every day. "Why do you think they're taking bone marrow now?"

Nick shook his head, remembering how Sijan had talked when she was done with him. He shivered and pulled his knees to his chest, ignoring the flash of pain as he stretched the muscles in his back.

"Stem cells, maybe," Carter mused, and Nick wasn't sure if the other man was talking to himself or not.

He replied anyway. "I don't know a lot about medicine."

"Yeah, me neither. I used to be a taxi driver." Carter rubbed the top of his head, running his hands over his greying, regrowing hair. "How about you?"

Nick frowned. "Does it matter?"

"...No. No, I guess not." The older man sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "I miss my girls," he said at length. "My family. My friends."

_You don't have any family, and you don't have any friends,_ Nick's mind hissed at him. He dug his fingers into his stubbly hair, trying to ignore the bitter, taunting voice. _Nobody's ever fucking cared about you. Because you've never cared for anybody._

"You okay?" Carter asked, worry on his face as he tried to catch his gaze.

Nick wasn't so good at eye contact any more. "Y-yeah. ...I'm just tired."

"Aren't we all." The older man patted him on the back. "You'll be okay."

_No, you won't._ "...Thanks."

"If you're half as tough as you look, this place won't get the best of you for a long, long time, 315."

Nick rubbed his eyes and nodded. He stared at the floor and listened to the comforting background hum of the other carriers. "I hope you're right," he mumbled after a while, hugging himself to try and generate a bit more warmth. He thought he should be used to the feeling of being cold by now — he thought he would be able to phase it out after living for so long in it. Instead, it got worse, and more painful, and impossible to ignore.

"Hope is... it's just a word, 315," Carter spoke softly next to him. His voice held no humor or strength. "A word with a big damned hole in it."

The words echoed in Nick's head for a very long time.

* * *

_(A/N: Turn the page, wash your hands.)_


	38. The Catalyst, Part III

Nothing changed, except for the amount of time that had passed and Nick's mind, which chased itself incessantly with repeated words and repeated memories and repeated images. He tried to stave it off by pacing. When that didn't work, he tried other exercises: push-ups, sit-ups, anything to put a strain on his body and give his mind something else to focus on.

It wasn't working anymore.

Nick began to fear being put back into his cell, back where his mind would begin scratching at itself until he wanted to scream. When they'd put him in the holding room to clean, he'd pace near the back wall, trying to be the last to be collected. When it was time for sampling in the treatment room, he'd do his best to distract Sijan or slow her down so he wouldn't have to return as quickly.

He hated it. He hated it more than anything else he'd ever known.

Nothing was helping anymore. Nothing. No matter what he tried to do to distract himself, he always ended up stuffed in the corner of the cell, sobbing in terror and anger and something he couldn't identify anymore. At first he tried to be quiet. Then he stopped caring about that, too. After all, there was no longer a man like Barratt around to silence him.

Most of the time, he just stayed in the corner and rubbed his forehead against the rough concrete wall until his skin was raw. Pain was a good distraction. The only one he had left.

He talked to no-one. Not the doctor or the guards or any of the other carriers. When it came time to go to the holding cell, he just paced, silent. The other carriers feared to approach him. Now even Carter kept his distance.

Nick knew the guards' routine like clockwork now. He knew it better than they did. He knew when they came, when they left, when the food arrived. He knew when he would be taken out for sampling. The routine was likely the only thing keeping him still attached to the rest of the world. Occasionally he'd think that someday, maybe something would be different.

The bitter, taunting half of his brain would remind him:

_Hope's just a word with a hole in it._

Nick, having memorized everything about the guards and the ward and the holding room, began to focus on the treatment room in the times that he was there. The walls, the floors and everything in between. His mind was frantic for something _different_, something he wasn't familiar with. Eventually he started to focus on the quarantine door and what lie beyond it. He focused most of his energy on staring at it while he was being worked on.

The door was electronically locked, and the guards and Sijan used a keycard to get in and out of it. There was a clock on the wall just outside and if he looked hard enough he could see it when the door opened or closed. Nick imagined he could hear it, too. The floor was a soft green color, unlike the off-white of the treatment room. The walls were cream-colored. It was just a hallway outside that went in both directions. The guards and doctor always turned to the right when they went through.

It took two and a half days for him to realize why he his mind was so centered on that door.

He had to get out.

He had to get out or his mind was going to destroy him, eat away at the rest of him until there was nothing left at all. Nick wondered what he'd have to do to get one of the guards to shoot him. He thought that perhaps he could grab for their pistol and turn the gun on himself before they could react.

Then his brain slowly and incessantly turned over all the information it had, everything it knew about the ward and the facility and the schedule and the doctor, and gave him a third option.

And he took it.

* * *

In three days, he was back in the treatment room. They didn't seem worried about the anemia anymore. Now they just wanted his blood. Nick sat in the dentist's chair, staring down at his restrained wrist. The guard had left to get Sijan something and ever since had been rubbing the zip-tie against the chair's arm. Most of the cushioning had been worn away by either age or because of others fighting to get out of the chair. He'd managed to work the connecting end of the zip-tie to the underside and he carefully worked on getting it open, one small bit at a time. Every time he got the connector over one of the teeth his heart jumped a bit in his chest. Ten or so. Then he could probably wiggle himself out of it.

He'd never attempted anything before, and he knew she trusted that he wouldn't try. Being silent and terrified for most of his time here had given him an unexpected advantage.

"How is your sampling site feeling?" Sijan asked suddenly. He jumped and went still, feeling his mouth go dry, thinking he'd been caught, but she wasn't even looking at him, she was going through his chart on the counter across the room.

He didn't answer her, but he knew she hadn't been expecting him to.

"If it's still sore, I can take a look at it for you." Sijan turned and looked at him. He stared at the floor and shook his head, listening to her let out a soft sigh. "I don't know why you've been so quiet, Nick. We had such good progress going."

_I'll show you _progress_, _his mind snarled.

He waited until she turned away again, then went back to work. The hard edge of the plastic was digging into that soft spot under his thumb, already raw and red from how much he'd been pushing at it. If it started bleeding, she was going to panic and then he'd be back in his cell and _he _would panic. He wasn't going back there. He wasn't going back there. Not today. Never again.

A noiseless shift came of him getting the connector past another tooth. Nick swallowed uncomfortably and kept going. Just a little more and he could get his hand out.

The quarantine door beeped and opened. Nick stopped again, feeling his chest tighten. _No, no, no, don't come in here. _He tried to keep the passive look on his face as he watched the guard enter and step up to Sijan's side after glancing over to him on the chair.

"Uh, Doctor...? There's been a bit of a..." the guard dropped his voice to speak to her. His radio crackled but it was muffled.

Nick went back to the zip-tie again. Whatever they were talking about, he couldn't hear it, and it wasn't important. Another few notches and he'd be free. He watched the other two, not breathing, as he got past one, then two, then three. He stared at the guard's back and begged fervently in his head that the man wouldn't turn around as he eased the ball of his hand over the edge of the plastic tie. It was loose — finally loose enough for him to slip out of. He licked his lips and swallowed again, shoving his hand back in. His heart was pounding in his throat.

_Don't look over here don't look over here don't look over here—_

The guard grunted at something Sijan said, then straightened up with a thin sigh. "I don't think so. They want everyone to stay where they are for now," he told her, then turned back to the door. "You okay with him?" the guard asked, pausing halfway across the room to give Nick another glance-over. He sounded nervous. That, or Nick really _couldn't_ read people's voices anymore.

"Yeah, no problem," Sijan spoke brightly, without a second of hesitation. "He's never given me trouble."

"All right." The man said, nodding; he did whatever the doctor asked without arguing. "Just stay here. I'm sure it's nothing." The door beeped, opened, and shut, and he was gone.

Nick felt like he was about to puke. He wiped his face with the arm hooked with the IV and let out a long, low breath.

Sijan turned toward him. "Don't worry about that. Just a bit of an altercation in the cafeteria. He'll be back in a little while." She was smiling again; he could tell by the wrinkles around her eyes.

Nick wanted to smile back, but he couldn't figure out how to do it. He watched her, instead, as she went back to his chart. As she turned her back on him. Nick stared at the back of her head, then looked over to the door. How far away was that guard by now?

It didn't matter. One way or the other, he was getting out of here.

He carefully slipped his hand out of the restraint and moved his fingers to the IV line coming out of his other arm, running a finger over the plastic tubing. The line was pretty long. Nick looked back at Sijan; she was bent over the counter, writing in his chart, distracted. He grabbed the line with both hands and pulled it. It stretched but did not break.

Nick sat up and scooted to the edge of the chair. His feet touched the cold floor.

Sijan either hadn't noticed he was moving, or trusted him enough to let him do so. It was a mistake. She shouldn't have put any sort of faith in him. Because he wasn't stable, because he could not stop his mind from howling in fear and terror any longer—

Because Barratt was right. He was a carrier, a monster. He could not be trusted.

There wasn't much space between the two of them now. Nick walked up behind her, holding the IV line in his hands. Close, so close. He could smell the cheap soap she must have used that morning.

For a few silent, buzzing seconds, he hesitated. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to do it.

She started speaking. "Nick, do you—"

Then he acted, lunging forward with the IV line, hooking her around the neck with it and pulling her toward him. The chair she'd been sitting in toppled to the floor. She did not weigh as much as she looked; that, or Nick was stronger than he thought. He yanked her back toward him, pulling the line tight, then looping it around her neck twice more, not letting it get caught up in her mask.

She managed a gasp, a gurgled, "Nick—" but he cut her off by tightening the line, silencing her words, stealing her breath. He held her against his body, and she bucked and struggled, but she had given him too much strength, and couldn't fight him off. His hand and arms kept rigid as he half-lifted her off the floor, listening to her shoes scuff on the linoleum. Her fingers came up and clawed at his arms. He did not release her.

Every second felt like an hour as he waited for a guard to burst through the door and shoot him. Nobody came, and slowly, the thrashing body in his arms began to grow weaker. He breathed into the back of Sijan's head, smelling the faint floral fragrance of soap in her hair. His eyes were stinging, but there was nothing there to irritate them.

She twisted, her body spasming as it panicked, desperate to release the pressure and breathe again. Sijan got one foot on the ground and shoved them both back, nearly tossing Nick into the chair, but his bare feet on the linoleum gave him greater purchase.

Sijan was making hollow noises now, strange sounds that he'd never heard before in his life. He pressed his mouth against the back of her head. Her hair was damp because his face was damp, because there were tears running down his cheeks; there had been for quite some time.

"Shh," he hissed, and sucked in a shivering breath. "Shh."

Her fingers, scratching at his hands and arms and her own neck and face, eventually fell slack. She slumped in his arms. Nick held her tightly, not moving. She wasn't making any noises. All he could hear now was his own ragged breaths, his own soft sobbing.

Nick finally let go. His joints and limbs felt stiff from holding their position for so long. Sijan dropped forward onto the floor and he followed her, falling to his knees and letting the IV line go slack.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. She gave him no answer. "I'm so sorry, Heather, I'm so, so sorry."

He stared down at her body. She was so still, except for one small strand of her hair that was slowly sliding off of her temple. It was like he was staring at a photograph. He detangled the IV line from around her neck. She didn't move, didn't take in a miraculous gasp of breath. Her face dipped down to the floor.

The room was silent. Everything was silent. Nick lifted his head and stared at the door — not the one that returned to the ward, but the one that went in the other direction. No guard had entered to shoot him, like he'd expected — like he'd hoped for. He was still alive.

Nick slowly lowered his gaze back down to the IV line in his arm. He wrapped his fingers around the plastic end in his vein and yanked it out, watching the collected blood come free from the IV and make a paint-stroke on the floor. A thin trail of blood ran sluggishly from the small, open wound, down his arm, and dripped onto the floor. He watched it and the little puddle it made for a few seconds, and then he got to his feet. His movements were jerky, but not out of fear. He was not afraid, not of what might happen to him. Any outcome was better than rotting in the cell. He was _not going back there._

With a small shake of his head, he went to the cupboards and started opening them. On one shelf he found a collection of sterile surgical tools. One of them was a scalpel attached to a handle. He took it and unwrapped it, pulling off the plastic blade guard and letting it drop to the floor. It made a small noise as it fell to the linoleum. Next he went and bent down beside the doctor's body, pulling the electronic keycard from her pocket.

He held the scalpel tightly as he moved to the door, pressing his ear against it and listening for noise. There was nothing but a soft hum; probably soundproof like the other quarantine door, back in the ward. He shoved Sijan's keycard into the slot and watched as the red door lock light turned green. Nick held his breath as he slowly pushed the door open a fraction, just until he could see outside. It was heavy, but moved quietly. Warmth brushed against his face. Why did they keep the quarantine ward so cold?

He was expecting immediate gunfire, but he could only hear some distant mumbling static. Nick peered out and saw the hallway, lined with its green linoleum. A few chairs. Some signs warning against contamination.

A loud and sudden voice, too close, hurried and nervous, right on the other side of the door:

"Doctor? We need to finish up in here right now. They've called a c—"

Nick flinched back, retreating into the treatment room. He expected his chest to tighten with panic, for his whole body to turn cold from fear, but it didn't happen. Instead he only felt numb and hollow. He moved to press himself against the wall on the other side of the door, keeping a firm grip on the scalpel.

The door began opening, and the voice spoke again.

"Doctor Sijan? Are you o—"

Nick watched the taller form enter, and then stop dead at the sight of the doctor's body crumpled on the floor. One of the guard's hands immediately dropped to his radio, the other went for the pistol at his side.

The scalpel was cold in Nick's hand. He jumped forward, scrabbling for and grasping the guard's hair, yanking his head back, listening to the bewildered cry of surprise and sudden dry gasp as he dug the scalpel in deep under the man's exposed jaw and across his neck. It went in so easily, like the Charger back in Pennsylvania, and came out just the same.

And just like the Charger, blood spurted from the guard's throat, painting the floor, the treatment chair, and Sijan's body. Nick kept his fingers entwined in the man's hair, his other hand gripping his jaw, fingers digging into the scalpel wound, yanking him back toward the floor as he waited for the body to stop struggling. The guard was making dry gurgling noises, scrabbling at his throat as if he'd be able to put everything back in, eyes wide and confused.

It only took a few minutes for it to be over. Nick dropped the body unceremoniously, listening to the guard's mask clack against the floor and his own strained panting. There was blood everywhere. He looked down at his own hands, wiped them on the soldier's uniform, then paused and collected the dead man's pistol and taser. The pistol's magazine was full. He wasn't sure how to use a taser. He'd figure it out.

Letting out a shivering breath, he turned back toward the door. His mind was quiet for the first time in weeks. He tried to hold onto it. The feeling was euphoric.

Nick shoved the scalpel and taser in the pocket of his threadbare pants and gripped the pistol tightly as he stepped out into the hall. He thought his first step toward freedom might feel different, like everything would suddenly change and he'd be normal, his brain would turn back on and he'd be _Nick _again. The only change he felt was the temperature of the air around him; slightly warmer.

The clean corridor stretched on ahead of him. Empty. A small office alcove to the right, empty. There was a computer on the desk that wasn't running. He walked down the hallway, bare feet making soft noises against the floor.

There were no men with guns. There were no automated turrets or security cameras or heavy barricades. It was just a small office lobby, empty and quiet. Nick couldn't believe how abandoned it looked. Where were all the soldiers? All the technicians? Wasn't this place supposed to be full of people escaping the Infection?

Nick heard a crackle of noise from the treatment room — a radio, either the guard's or Sijan's. He heard a voice but couldn't discern words. All he knew was that they weren't going to get an answer, and then they'd come to investigate why.

He kept moving down the hall, steeling himself for someone to come out of the door at the far end and start shooting at him. There were signs plastered up along the pale walls. He stared at one of them for a long few seconds before his mind remembered how to read words and text and he was able to figure out what it said.

'_WARD B: QUARANTINE_

_ENTRY AND EXIT WITHOUT MILITARY _

_ESCORT STRICTLY PROHIBITED._

_KNOWN INFECTED BEYOND THIS POINT. _

_WEAR PROTECTIVE GEAR AT ALL TIMES.'_

Nick already knew what that was all about. He glanced over the next sign, which was handwritten and pointed further down the hall.

_ 'WARD C: LABORATORY_

_KNOWN CONTAMINANTS BEYOND THIS POINT._

_WEAR PROTECTIVE GEAR AT ALL TIMES.'_

It didn't sound pleasant, but it was the only path he had. He wasn't going back to his ward, not while he was still breathing. The door was solid, without windows or any other distinguishing writing or signs on it. Nick still had Sijan's keycard. He brought it up to the lock and stuck it in, listening to the affirmative beep as it opened for him.

Warmth spread across his face as he pushed the door open a crack. He re-gripped the handle of the gun. It had been a long time since he'd held one, but even with shitty aim, he knew it was going to get him the hell out of here. Even if it meant turning it on himself before they got to him.

Nick took a breath and opened the door the rest of the way. Bright fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, illuminating a wide room filled with machines. None of them were running. There was nobody here, not that he could see.

Confusion filtered through his mind as he stepped inside, glancing around at the machinery and tables. Some of them were so old they were rusted, and some were still covered in cellophane wrap used for the transport of newly-manufactured goods. They were all dead and silent.

He looked back at the door he'd come through. Had he missed a hallway somewhere? Weren't they supposed to be doing research here?

Anxiety began creeping up on him again. It wasn't supposed to be empty. There were supposed to be soldiers, and people yelling, and gunfire. He was _supposed to be dead_ by now.

Nick swallowed and wandered a little further into the laboratory. There were papers and folders strewn haphazardly over the tables. Vials and tubes lined up on racks. He saw an overturned chair and felt his eyebrows tightening down. A few more papers lay on the floor.

They had left in a hurry, wherever they were. He felt his stomach turning over and over. Maybe they had seen him coming. Maybe they _did_ have cameras. He hadn't seen any, but really, that didn't mean a damn thing. They weren't back in ancient times, despite what it felt like. Technology was still available and it was still just as advanced as it had been before the Infection.

A slamming noise snapped his attention away from his thoughts. Nick moved before he even knew where the sound had come from, squeezing himself under a table, next to a trashcan overflowing with crumpled paper. His mind went back to a waterlogged office complex and the tapping noises of ruined bone on linoleum. It was something he didn't have time to think about.

Two voices started shouting, making him flinch and crouch lower, trying to avoid being spotted.

"Over here, over here!" A man, voice loud, rushed, on the edge of panic. "The doctor's still down in the ward!"

A woman that sounded unfamiliar. "W-wasn't David with her...?"

"I don't know! We've got to get her out of there. Leave that door open; it might be locked down when we get back."

Nick listened as heavy, booted footsteps crashed through the laboratory, to the door he'd entered from. He could hear radios blaring with hurried words and the owners of the two voices panting as they rushed to the door. They didn't see him, or didn't think to look for him, because after a few more seconds the door beeped and they were gone.

He knew he didn't have much time before they found her, found out what he'd done. Nick scrambled out from underneath the table. There were two other doors: the one those two had come through, and another on the other side of the lab. He chose the latter on impulse, mostly because there was no lock, knowing he was going to get himself lost in this damn facility, but he wasn't going to go wherever _they_ had come from.

Nick opened the door and threw himself inside without really thinking about it. It was unlit, and he got forward a few feet before hitting a wall, knocking something over, and realizing he'd put himself in a very small room that was probably used for storage.

Panic clawed immediately at his mind and he went back for the door — it was just like his cell, dark and cramped, he was trapped again—

The voices returned, on the other side of the door, in the lab. Nick's hand froze on the doorknob.

"Jesus Christ," one of them was screaming. "_Christ!_"

The other — the woman — was loud, panicked. "Are they that fucking smart, Pete?!"

Nick's heart was in his throat. He could feel the dark, tiny space pressing heavily against him from all sides, suffocating him. Biting back a noise that was trying to come out of his throat, he slid to the floor. They were definitely going to come for him now. It would only take a few minutes before they figured out where he'd gone, and then it'd be over. They wouldn't keep him now, not after what he'd done. It'd be a quick shot to the head and they'd dump his corpse in an incinerator.

His eyes were stinging again. He'd gotten farther than he'd ever thought possible but it still wasn't enough. He wanted _out_. He wanted to be outside again, he wanted to leave this place behind, he wanted...

He _needed_ to get to Maine. He needed to _find them_.

Nick picked himself up. The gun was still heavy in his hand. If they wanted him, they were sure as hell going to get him. He clicked the safety off. At close range, he'd at least be able to take _one _of them with him.

"Forget about it!" one of the voices was shouting. "We gotta get the fuck out of here before the lockdown."

He listened carefully, pressing his forehead against the freezing metal of the door.

"But—but they haven't sounded the alarm yet!"

"It doesn't matter. They've already started contamination procedure. We got to get to Ward E before—"

A loud wail started up and Nick's instinct knew exactly what it was before his mind could consciously identify it — an alarm. He crouched back down against the door, although he knew the sound wouldn't hurt him, he knew what usually _followed_ the sound.

"Oh God, they've started the lockdown."

"The contaminant must've turned."

Nick lifted his eyes though he couldn't see with them as the word brushed against his mind. Contaminant.

There was a zombie somewhere. Someone had gotten infected.

Which was why he hadn't been shot the second he stepped out of the treatment room. There was something else going on, probably all the way on the other side of the facility. And he was expediting his own death by walking into the jaws of whatever had happened out there.

No, he could find another way out. If they were well and truly distracted, he could—

"Wh-where are you going?!"

"Getting some better protection. We need to pass D before E. Hell if I'm getting contaminated myself."

They kept coming until they were right on the other side of his door. Nick scrambled back, hitting the wall behind him. The terror he felt from being in the dark, small space got infinitely worse. He struggled into an upright position, fumbling with the pistol, hoping to God that the chamber was primed. The doorknob rattled.

As soon as light hit his eyes, he flinched his face away and he fired. The gun barked in his hands, recoil sending tremors through his whole body, but he kept shooting, hearing screams, hoping they weren't his own. His vision struggled to adjust to the light as the pistol went dry, and it was clicking uselessly in his hand.

Nick panted on the floor, keeping his face turned away, waiting for the returning fire of another gun, but he only heard soft groaning. It wasn't himself. He hadn't been shot. Nick dropped the empty pistol and stood back up, blinking rapidly as he figured out what had happened, what he'd done: one of the two guards lay crumpled on the floor, dead. The other, the woman, was only winged, trying to drag herself away from the storage closet. The alarm was still blaring.

He stepped over the dead body and caught up with her. She tried to turn over to face him, but he'd hit her in the shoulder and low in her chest, and she was bleeding out.

Nick took her pistol from its holster before she could get to it and stood over her. She stared up at him, breathing heavily, raising her uninjured hand in an attempt at defense. A drop of spit mingled with blood trailed down her chin.

"Please—" she began, and coughed, spitting blood out. He'd gotten her in the lung. She was bleeding into them. "Please..."

He only wanted one thing from her. "How do I get out?" The level of calm in his own voice startled him.

She shook her head, sobbing. "Help me..." He could barely hear her past the noise of the alarm.

"I can't. How do I get out?" he repeated, staring down at her. She pawed at his leg with her uninjured arm and tried to talk again but it came out as a gurgling sound instead. Nick let out a breath and turned away from her, moving back to the other guard he'd shot. He bent down and took the boots off of the body, pulling them onto his own feet. They were a little big. He didn't care. If it was still snowing outside, he wasn't going to get far without them.

The woman was still crying on the floor. Nick ignored her the best he could, grabbing the additional magazine from the dead man's pistol and shoving it in his pocket next to the taser. His fingers brushed against cold metal and he remembered he still had the scalpel with him.

A thought buzzed through his mind, guided by the frenzied half forged by the cold and dark of his cell. He stood back up and walked back toward the woman, and his feet felt abnormally sluggish and heavy. Shoes were something he'd have to get used to again.

_Contaminant_, that half of his mind whispered, and without another second's thought he drew the scalpel down his own palm. He squeezed his hand into a fist, watching his own blood drip out between his fingers and onto her. She seemed to have the presence of mind to understand what he was doing, and she started panicking, wiping at herself, as if his blood were something she could simply brush off.

Nick didn't feel the pain from the cut, but he did feel the smile tugging at his face.

"Sorry," he murmured. He wasn't.

She was sobbing loudly, still pawing at the blood on her, and Nick knew she would inadvertently mix it with her own, and then this fucking facility would have_ another_ problem on its hands. He let out a breath and shook his hand slightly, feeling a bit of a sting now. There was a box of thin paper towels on a table and he grabbed some and pressed them into the wound before turning away from the guard, leaving her where she lay.

The alarm sounded like it was coming from every direction at once.

Over the intercom, a dull male voice began to speak. It didn't startle Nick as much as it should have.

_"Warning. This is not a drill. Contaminant confirmed in Ward D. Proceed to Ward E until further notice. Wards B through D have been compromised. Lockdown in effect. Do not travel through Wards B through D. Repeat; do _not_ travel through Wards B through D. Continue to Ward E until further notice."_

The man repeated his message and then the intercom went dead. The alarm continued, wailing rhythmically. Nick looked back at the guard; she was trembling on the floor. He couldn't tell if she was near death or near Infection. It didn't matter to him.

He looked back to the door the guards had come in through. There was a chair stuck in it, leaving it cracked open. Nick glanced over at the entryway to his ward. The red light on the lock had gone dead.

Were they going to leave the others there? Or would they save them, too?

Nick turned the keycard over in his hand, feeling nerves creep up on him. The nagging fear of going back there began to dig into his brain again.

But he couldn't just leave the others there. He couldn't. Swallowing his fear, he moved back to the door to the ward, sliding the keycard in. There was no response. He tried again and again, but nothing happened. It was dead.

He slammed a hand down on the cool metal and let out the sob building in his throat.

_Hope is just a word with a hole in it._

"Sorry, Carter," he breathed, and he wiped his face, and turned away.

* * *

_(A/N: Turn the page, wash your hands.)_


	39. The Catalyst, Part IV

The alarm continued to blare as Nick shoved the keycard in his pocket and went back to the open door. It was as empty as he'd expected it to be after everyone else had been told to evacuate. He wondered what could have happened for them to get a zombie in here. Had it been like the cruise ship, where they'd handled their samples incorrectly and ended up contaminating all the workers?

No, he supposed then the zombies would be in the laboratory, not in another ward. He gave one last glance to the woman on the floor. Now she wasn't moving at all. Nick pushed a hand across his hair and nudged the door the rest of the way open. The carpeted floor was worn and stained. He looked down at it for a second. It'd been a long time since he'd seen anything but concrete and stained tile beneath his feet.

Nick held his stolen pistol tightly as he moved down the gently curving hallway. There were more signs on the wall here, all of them warning about contamination. He begged in his mind that the doors he had to go through weren't locked down like the last one. The guards had propped open the door to the lab on their way in; with any luck they'd have done the same to all of them.

The rhythmic blare of the alarm was incessant. Nick tried to phase it out. He'd heard noises like that many times before. It didn't mean he was going to get swarmed by dozens of zombies. There was no way there'd even _be _dozens of them in here.

He came to a T-section in the hallway. One side had a sign pointing to the left reading _'Ward D — Personnel Quarantine'_, and the other, _'Ward E — Personnel Facilities'._

There was really only one option for him. He went left, wiping his suddenly sweaty hands off on his thin pants. For a few seconds, the lights above him flickered. Nick ducked his head instinctively, flinching against the wall, expecting something to come crashing through the walls and kill him, a Tank or even a military _tank_, but nothing happened and the lights came back on.

He looked back down the hallway where he'd come from; nothing. Ahead of him was a door, like all the others, but the red light on the lock was still on. He swallowed and approached; it was marked, predictably, '_Personnel Quarantine._' He wondered why the personnel would need a quarantine, and slowly sifted through his memories until the noise of violence and screaming replayed in his head.

Nick dug the keycard back out of his pocket. He didn't expect anything to happen, he expected it to react like the door back to his ward, but for some reason the red light turned green and he pushed the door open. Inside, it was much warmer, but the lights were dimmed. It seemed empty, but he thought back to the guards in the laboratory and grabbed the chair next to the door, propping it open before he went any further.

Three steps inside and there was a monumental clatter and a wet snarl. Nick had fled back to the door before he even attempted to figure out what it was; half of his brain said _zombie_ and the other half said _person_. He lifted the pistol but nothing approached him; he couldn't see anything but glass walls on one side of the room.

The grunting growl came again, and a pounding noise, like fists on a window. Nick crept closer, keeping the pistol raised, ready to fire at anything that came after him. He looked over at the glass walls and as he approached he saw something — some_one —_ behind them; it was a man and he was standing up, hands pressed against the glass, blood dripping from his mouth and nose.

When the man noticed him he began to beat on the glass fervently, snarling, leaving smears of blood and spit behind. Nick took a few steps back from the glass. A zombie.

Or, nearly one. This one was still trying to talk, barking behind a mouthful of slime and blood.

"Kill you—" it snarled, "—kill you!" It seemed familiar and triggered a feeling of terror in Nick's mind.

Its clothes were thin and stained, much like what the carriers wore. Unlike the subjects, it had a bed, and a toilet, and a sink in with it. Nick stared, and began to understand that he was on the outside this time — looking into another cage.

He thought back to the sign on the wall — _Personnel Quarantine — _and realized why he recognized the voice. The voice, but not the face, because it was a face he'd only ever seen shielded by a plastic biohazard mask.

Nick let out a breath. "...Barratt?"

The guard was too far gone to remember its name. It pounded on the glass, growling turning to shrieks as it fought to get at him. Nick could see the animalistic reflection of light in its eyes.

"Jesus," he whispered. It had been a long time since he'd seen the man. He must have caught it from 909, but did it really take that long to incubate? Maybe they had been trying to treat him.

Barratt didn't stop flailing at the glass. Nick hoped it was shatterproof; judging by the amount of blood smears on it he suspected the zombie had been trying to get out for quite some time. He kept his eye on the guard while he continued to walk down the room, and Barratt followed him, like a dog in a fenced run.

There was only one other door here, with contamination posters and a sign marked 'Exercise yard'—

And a glowing sign above that marked 'EXIT'.

Nick's heart surged in his chest. Everything else became secondary as he rushed to it — he couldn't hear the sirens or Barratt's snarling or the sound of fists on glass because _the door out was right there_, and he approached it at a sprint, almost falling over himself as he rushed to just touch it. The metal was freezing cold. There was no window. He didn't care. He _knew_ it was the way out. It had to be. It had to be, it had to be.

He fumbled for his keycard again, and felt his stomach drop as he saw that the light on the lock was off. Nick shoved the card in anyway, waiting for the light to turn green. Nothing happened.

Nick put the card in again, and again, and again. The door didn't respond.

"_Fuck_," he snarled, kicking the door. The inside of the boot felt strange against the bare skin of his foot.

Barratt gagged, grunted, and roared at him.

"Shut the fuck up!" Nick barked in reply. Barratt continued beating on the glass.

He stared at the door, feeling the panic building right back up again. No. He was so close. He had to get the fuck out of here. He was going to _get the fuck out of here._

Nick lifted the pistol and fired it at the lock. There was a popping noise but the door didn't do anything. He growled and fired again, emptying the entire magazine into the damned thing, not caring if the bullets ricocheted off of the metal and killed him. Plastic shards dropped to the ground but the door still stood locked. Nick dropped the gun and started prying at the lock with his fingers, ripping aside the ruined protective shield, clawing at the wiring behind it in an attempt to get the door unlocked.

"Come _on_," he sobbed. He was sure he could feel the icy, fresh air coming in from the other side. His mind turned frantically, howling with desperation, he wasn't going to go back there he was going to get _out_ he was going to get the fuck _out of here and nothing was going to fucking stop him—_

The door clicked softly and Nick could barely hear it past Barratt's shrieking and the alarm blaring and the roar in his head—

He pushed down the handle and the door swung open towards him.

Frozen air poured over him; it smelled clean and it hurt to breathe in, but he did it, he dragged in the deepest breaths he could and let them out as shuddering sobs. There was no light, no light at all, but he looked out the door and far above him he could see clouds, actual fucking _clouds_, dark and bunched up in the still sky.

Nick felt himself trembling but not from the cold, he could barely feel it as he stepped out the door and into a thin layer of snow. The alarm was still blaring. He didn't care. Barratt continued to beat at the dividing wall. He didn't care. Nick took another step outside, staring at the snow, the faraway treeline, the edge of the fence in front of him. He let out a breath and watched it turn into fog in the air.

He wiped his face before his tears could turn to ice.

His arms were freezing; he ran his hands down them and felt the goosebumps. All he wanted was to run, to climb the fence and dash for the woods and _run away_, but the part of his mind that wasn't insane from this Godforsaken place screamed for him to stop.

Nick shook his head, finally turning away from the sight, because he knew his mind was correct; he had to find some sort of protection other than the threadbare pants and T-shirt or he was going to die even faster than he ever would have inside the facility.

He retreated back into the building. The door wouldn't shut on its own, not like the others. Nick kept looking back at it, expecting it to be a hallucination, that it wasn't really his freedom out there, just another trick by Sijan and everyone else. He looked about for a storage room and found a small hallway to the left that led to a row of lockers. He expected every last one of them to be locked, but they weren't, and he opened them one-by-one as he searched for something to take with him.

There wasn't much, but in the locker with 'Barratt' written over the top he found what he assumed was the man's clothing, drab-grey over tan, military garb that was clean and in good condition. The other man was much larger than him but Nick didn't really care, he put the pants and shirt and jacket on over everything else. Layers, a soft voice reminded him in the back of his head.

He pulled the hood up over his head, knowing that he needed to keep it covered now that he had nothing but a thin layer of hair. Nick went about digging through the rest of the lockers, looking for anything of use. Papers and letters he brought out and let spill all over the floor. Random decorations and knick-knacks from a world that had died long, long ago. Photos of family that he couldn't even look at.

Nick had been hoping for food, but he hadn't expected any here. Not in a quarantine ward. All he could find was a decorative Zippo lighter — which thankfully still had fluid in it — and a pair of gloves that he pulled over his hands. He pawed through the last of the lockers. There was one marked 'Sijan' at the top. He left it alone.

He went back out into the main room, ignoring the sounds of the sirens and Barratt still trying to get at him as he moved straight back for the exit door. Nick reclaimed the pistol, removing the empty magazine and replacing it with the one he'd gotten from the other guard's pocket. He at least had that. That, and the taser. It probably wouldn't work on zombies.

It didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but the world outside that door.

Nick pulled the door back open again and there it was, snow and ice and that frigid, pure air. He let out a long, shivering sigh, and slipped outside. Barratt shrieked in fury; he ignored it and the alarm blaring and the roiling in his own mind as he stepped out into the snow, shutting the door.

He prayed that it had locked behind him, but he didn't care to check. Nick shoved the pistol into the jacket pocket and took off for the chain-link fence at a dead sprint, jamming the toes of the boots between the chain and climbing up. It was tall and there was barbed-wire at the top, but the treeline on the other side of the clear snowfield stood silently and it was the most welcoming sight Nick had ever seen. He tried to wiggle himself between the barbed-wire coils, but his jacket got caught.

Nick felt his mind trying to panic again, the wild half somehow thinking that the wire had come to life and was trying to drag him back, and he pushed himself up and over to the other side with a strained grunt, feeling pain along his arms and neck but ignoring it as he scrambled clumsily to the ground.

He landed hard on his hands and knees and could feel stinging pain on his arms, but he was focused more on the snow beneath him and the field ahead of him, white and untouched. There was nothing between him and the treeline.

Swallowing, he got to his feet and went for it.

He expected gunfire. Or a single shot from a rifle. He expected darkness to crash down on him and death to come because there wasn't a chance that this was real, his luck didn't work that way, this was all a hallucination, maybe he'd died all the way back in the facility and this was just a fever dream. Maybe he'd died all the way in Eight Springs. D.C. New Orleans.

No, he wasn't dead. He was alive, he was running, he could feel his own harsh breathing, the pain of the icy air filling his chest, the burn in his legs as he struggled through the snow. The sound of the alarm drew away as he put more and more space between himself and the facility. His boots crunched in the snow. He could hear his breaths coming heavily, wheezes escaping his mouth.

The treeline came closer and the image blurred as his eyes teared up from the cold and not from the cold; he squeezed them shut and shook his head and tried to squint and see into the darkness. The trees stood, swaying in a light wind.

_I'm out_, his mind shrieked. _I'm out. I'm out. I'm out I'm out I'm out I'm out—_

He was finally able to reach out and touch one of the trees. The bark gave way under his gloved hand. _Out. Out. Out._ Nick collapsed against it, gasping for breath, shutting his eyes against the pain of the air in his lungs. _Free. Free._

A sob came up his throat; he swallowed, tried to control it, but it broke painfully from his chest and he just let it out, crumpled against the tree, the wind blowing all around him. He huddled against the bark, letting his mind turn itself over and over with what had become reality. No more needles. No more Barratt. Not another second of that damp hole in the wall where his mind devoured itself.

Nick slowly tried to get his breathing under control. He could still hear the alarm. Wiping his face, he climbed shakily to his feet and turned his head to look.

The facility wasn't large. He'd expected a wide, sprawling building with different wings and tanks and trucks outside, but it was _tiny_, like a used car dealership. Nick squinted, barely able to see the door he'd exited through; it was still shut.

There was sudden light and he flinched away, and as he began to scrabble further into the trees, a resounding boom erupted through the air. Nick stuck himself behind a tree and covered his head, paranoia telling him that maybe they'd fired a grenade at him or something, but the surrounding trees didn't change and he dared a look back to see what had happened.

Fire leapt into the air, smoke belching from one side of the facility. He didn't know which one, didn't want to know. He didn't care what had caused it or what effects it was going to have.

All Nick knew was this:

He was out, he was free, and he was getting as far away as possible.

With a long, hitched breath, he got to his feet, peering into the trees. It was dark; he could barely see anything. Nick shook his head and began moving, first at an awkward trudge and then at a low jog. He barely gave himself enough time to duck under branches and he kept tripping on sticks and roots.

He kept going. He didn't even know which direction he was headed. The gun sat heavy in the jacket pocket; if he ended up in another part of the facility, he knew what his next move would be.

Nick pushed himself further and further, until the sound of the alarm was gone and he could only hear his own breathing; only then did he stop. He panted, standing in the middle of the woods, surrounded by dark trees on all sides. The branches rattled overhead. He hugged himself, realizing that he was shivering, that he was freezing.

_Well, this was a smart move_, his mind snarled.

He walked further, not sure what he was hoping to find. Roots tripped him up and he kept his eyes on the ground — as useful as they were — trying to avoid going face-first into the snow. Had to keep his head warm. It was freezing but he thought back to his cell he knew nothing could be colder than that.

Suddenly the ground tipped down underneath him, and he was falling, tumbling through snow and empty air. He landed in a heap at the bottom of a steep incline and scrambled back to his feet, looking around wildly.

A quarry. He'd ended up in a quarry.

Nick stood in the snow for a minute, hunched over his knees, trying to catch his breath. He could feel his arms and neck stinging still, the cold creeping into his limbs. His clothes were wet. Definitely not a good thing.

Grunting, he straightened up. The steep incline rose up behind him; he couldn't believe he'd fallen that far without breaking his neck. Down here, the snow was deep enough that it had probably cushioned his fall.

Everything was dark. He couldn't make out any detail, but at least the ground was white and the sky was black. It was enough. All he could see of the moon was a tiny sliver, a slice of light that did nothing to light his way. Nick stared up at it, hoping that it wouldn't disappear, mind still wondering whether all this was a dream or not.

Then the moon _did_ vanish, and for two seconds he started to panic again, but then he looked back down and realized he'd walked up to a building and the edge of the roof had concealed the sky from him. Nick couldn't even tell what the hell it was. It was tall and he reached out with his hands like a blind man — not that he was far from being one — to feel along the side of it, hoping to reach a door. The snow hadn't fallen as harshly under the eaves, and he was glad to have his legs free of it.

His stiff, frozen fingers bumped against something and he felt about until he identified that it was a door. He grabbed the doorknob but it wouldn't turn. Nick didn't even know what kind of building he was looking at, or what was inside. He half-expected it to be part of the facility.

Either way, he had to get out of the weather, or he was going to freeze to death. A lot of good his escape would be if that happened.

Nick gripped the doorknob with both hands and rammed his shoulder against the door. It was flimsy, made of wood, reminding him of a cheap mobile home. He bashed into it again, hissing as his ribs reminded him that they were still sensitive and still hurt like hell.

He grunted and dug into his pockets, grabbing the old Zippo and fumbling to turn it on. The fire bloomed against his face, intoxicatingly warm. Nick lowered the flame slowly toward the door, but then looked to his left and saw a window.

Clicking the Zippo shut, he moved to bang his elbow into it, then stopped and used the handle of the pistol instead. The glass made a sharp noise as it shattered, pieces making hollow noises as they landed on the floor on the inside of the building.

Nick pushed the shards off the edge of the sill and carefully levered himself up, then over. The smell of something dead mingled with that of lumber or sawdust. It was a strange mixture that somehow put him a bit more at ease despite the pitch black of the room all around him.

At least he was out of the wind and snow. Nick grabbed the Zippo again, and flicked it on, holding the shivering flame up to try to light his way. He was inside a small room with an overturned table and chairs. It looked like a small office. Probably where the quarry workers went to do... well, whatever it was they did. Or used to do. Now it really wasn't worth thinking about.

Nick crept forward, listening to the low hum of the wind picking up outside. The lighter showed a small hallway, and he moved into it, knowing he should get as far from the outdoors as possible. He swallowed as the small space seemed to crush him from all sides. It wasn't the cage, he told himself. He was far from it now. And he wasn't going back.

It didn't help much. He wandered further into the hallway and then found a closet, tucked into a corner, just big enough for him to fit into. Nick rubbed his face and pushed aside the clothes hanging up inside. They were all identical — sets of coveralls that reminded him sharply of Ellis and he froze right where he was, the tiny fire from the lighter casting vague shadows on the wall.

Nick blinked, remembering the kid's voice, the southern drawl, although he couldn't remember any words. Just the tone. Friendly and relaxed. Always friendly. An attitude Nick would never be able to understand. He tried to come up with something, anything the kid might have said, all those ages ago. His mind turned out a blank.

He sighed and shook his head, dragging himself back to reality. Nick took a few deep breaths before moving himself into the closet. He closed the Zippo before it could light anything on fire, and shut the door, listening to his own breathing in the tiny space.

Panic dug into his senses and the only thing that stopped him from running back out into the open was the fear of freezing to death. He pushed himself back into the corner, hugging his knees to his chest, trying to get warm. Eventually he took down the coveralls and used them as ragged, makeshift blankets. He pressed his face against the wall and took measured breaths, trying to carefully guide his thoughts away from the facility, away from the cage.

Instead, he tried to remember Ellis' voice, and Rochelle's and Coach's. They all seemed to mix together into one sound, warm and welcoming. He tried to remember the words they'd said, and they'd said so many to him. But they wouldn't come. Nick concentrated on the hazy memory of their faces, and only theirs. He did not want to think about Rob or what fate the stupid dog had come to. Or Terrence, dead on the frozen lake.

The words _I miss you_ came unbidden to his thoughts and he remembered the note, the little scrap of paper all the way back at Eight Springs, Ellis' bad handwriting and worse spelling. He couldn't remember the rest of the note. Only those three words.

So he repeated them, both aloud and in his head. A broken little mantra of his own.

For the first time in six weeks, he fell asleep on carpeted floor without the hum of a dozen other people trying to stay sane around him. It was the best he'd slept since Eight Springs.

* * *

Light peeking out under the closet door was the first thing he saw when he woke up. It took him five minutes to realize what he was looking at. Nick lifted his head, blinking, mind unable to process that it wasn't chain-link and uneven concrete. He touched the wall next to him. Cheap wallpaper, not stone. The floor under him, carpet. He shifted, felt the weight of the coveralls on him. Not a damp blanket.

His stomach roared, sudden and painful; his internal clock told him it was time to eat, but there were no indifferent guards to push a handful of granola under his cage door anymore. He hoped he would have better luck scavenging.

Carter's voice spoke in his head again. He shut his eyes, then sighed and opened them and got to his feet. Peering out of the closet at the hallway outside, he pushed the coveralls gently to the floor. The hall was empty. Pale morning light came in through the broken window. He could see the wet spots on the carpet from his boots where he'd come in.

It was quiet. No wind, no murmuring of other people.

He stepped out slowly, expecting someone to immediately start shooting him. Nick suspected that feeling would never go away, no matter how far he got from the facility.

Letting out a long breath, he moved the rest of the way down the hall. It _was_ an office of some sort, with maps and papers posted all over the walls. Many of them were faded, some ripped and hanging. Nick went to the desk and pawed through it. Pencils and papers, nothing edible or useful.

He wandered through the little office, pawing through the refuse, reminding himself that this was what he'd done before the facility, and he could do it again. _You aren't there anymore_, the calm half of his mind said. _You never left,_ the other side whispered.

Nick eventually got to a back room with a tiny dining table, a sink in the corner and a miniature refrigerator underneath it. He dug through it and found a few bottles of water, unsealed. Nick drank out of them anyway, trying not to think about who else's lips might have touched it before.

There were a set of tiny cupboards; he found a roll of crackers in one and a bag of stale licorice in the other. He took both, eating a few of the crackers, ignoring his stomach's demands for more.

Under the dining table he found a grocery sack, one of the reusable ones made of fabric. Nick piled all his things into it and took it with him.

A bit of food, water, and a gun.

Good enough for him.

He stared out the broken window for a long time, searching for any sign that the military had followed him out here. The trees stood at the top of the quarry, swaying slightly, and that was the only movement he could see. He couldn't stay here forever.

Nick climbed back out of the window and walked around the office, looking out at the forgotten machinery that had been used to dig out the rocks. He studied the snow, looking for tire tracks or footprints. It hadn't snowed overnight, which was helpful. Nick stared at the ground as he started walking through the quarry, keeping as close to the slag hills and machinery as possible for better cover.

There was no gunfire or yelling or car engines. Nick listened to the whispering of the machines rocking in the wind all around him, trying not to let his mind imagine other sounds amongst them.

He kept walking, heading toward the gentle incline to the exit of the quarry. The sun was rising right in front of him, which meant he'd have to turn left when he got to the top.

Nick smiled to himself. Already slipping back to his old habits. He could do this.

As he crested the road out of the quarry, he stopped for a drink of water, and although his mind warned him against it, he turned and looked back at where he'd come from.

Past the quarry and the woods behind it, there was a thin trail of smoke spiraling into the air. Nick shivered as he looked at it for a few short moments. Then he turned, and continued down the road.

_Maine,_ he thought.

_That's where they are._

_I'm going there._

* * *

_(A/N: Sorry for the delay! I uploaded all three of these at once just so you wouldn't have to wait on a cliffhanger._

**_NOTICE: If everyone could please avoid posting major spoilers in the reviews I would really appreciate it. We're getting close to the end now and I know many people (including myself) usually read the reviews before they dive into a long fanfic. I'd hate for someone to be spoiled for anything big._**

_Many many many kudos to my totally awesome and super-patient beta-readers, Kit and Vicks._

_Coming up next: The Stray. Happy holidays!)_


	40. The Stray

The roads were filled with a heavy silence that seemed to buzz in Nick's ears as he walked. It was slow going. He kept stopping to search cars and buildings, looking for food or weapons, anything that could help him. The most he found was expired food that he collected anyway, remembering the journey before Kyle had shown up, and how little he'd been able to find even in the suburban areas.

He kept looking down at the road underneath his feet, expecting to see the shaggy hair of a big brown dog walking next to him. Every time he looked, the road was empty, and his chest would tighten with painful regret.

Nick began to hum to himself to break the silence; he missed the background noise of the other carriers. It was the only thing he truly _did_ miss about that hell hole.

When his mind began to wander, coming up with scenarios about what had happened to the others, he had to steer it away, to concentrate on something else. Every man for himself, wasn't it? Hadn't that been the attitude that had gotten him so far? Gotten him _out_ of that place?

It felt like part of his mind was still there, in that freezing cell, gnawing at itself.

He continually looked over his shoulder, still expecting a military Hummer to come screeching around the corner and run him down, execute him for the murder of four people. Four people. Not zombies. _People_. It wasn't like Gregory. The guards he'd killed weren't monsters, and the more he thought about the three of them the more he felt like they'd been undeserving of what he'd done to them. They'd just been doing their jobs. Trying to survive. Just like him. They weren't lucky enough to be carriers... or immune.

Sijan hadn't deserved what he'd done to her, either. But he couldn't think about her at all.

His humming turned into mumbled singing under his breath, although he wasn't sure he'd ever heard the lyrics before. He breathed softly about ants marching on a highway, about tears on a river, switching the lyrics and stringing different lines together randomly, forging a song about himself and the world he lived in.

The singing was better than the silence. He wished he had someone around to listen to him.

After a few hours of walking, he was tired. Even all the pacing and jogging he'd done in the facility weren't enough to prepare his body for it. The boots still felt strange and heavy on his feet and it was tough to slog through the snow with them.

Nick slowed to a stop in the middle of the road. There were trees on either side of him, shifting noiselessly in the wind. He let out a breath and looked behind him. Wherever he'd come from had long faded from view. All he could see was the line of gently swaying footprints he'd left behind; he tracked his gaze along them slowly until he got to where he stood. Nick sighed and looked ahead of him. Whitewashed road, and trees.

He shifted the bag on his shoulder and took out the roll of crackers, nibbling on the edge of one of them as he started walking again. His legs hurt. He walked anyway. At least he wasn't running out of breath every few minutes, and he supposed he had the facility to thank for that.

Nick squinted his eyes as the wind shifted direction and began pushing against his face. He tugged on the hood of the jacket, trying to shield the top of his head, but the wind seemed to worm in right between the fabric and his skin. His short hair didn't help.

The branches of the trees rattled above him and he looked up on pure instinct, searching them for anything waiting to pounce. Everything looked exactly how it had before he'd gone to the facility: lifeless. He watched the snow fall and drift from where it had collected on the branches, creating fleeting veils that slipped like ghosts between the tree trunks.

He stuffed the rest of the cracker into his mouth and wrapped his arms around himself, bending his head into the wind, trying to keep warm. His mind was torn between reminding itself of how cold his cell had been _—_ and how warm this wind must be by comparison _—_ and trying to wipe the memory of it completely. The image of the chain-link and uneven concrete stayed in the front of his brain, superimposed over every other memory he could bring up.

Nick rubbed his forehead harshly, as if that would tear the image from his mind.

_Did you really leave?_ that half of his brain hissed. _Or are you still sitting in that crack in the wall?_

He stubbornly ignored it, staring at the snow underneath him, watching his feet as he walked. It all blurred into the same shade of off-white and he focused on that instead. Underneath him, the road passed by, and above him, the trees clattered and whispered to each other in the soft wind.

* * *

He wasn't sure how far he'd gotten by the time it started to get dark. The sun was setting to his left and just a bit ahead. Not quite due north; he was turning a bit westward now, but he wasn't going to venture off of the road in order to continue in that specific direction. He didn't even know where he _was_, not even which state he was in. The word _Shaftsbury_ rose in his memory, the name on the sign when he'd first been dragged into the facility, but he had no clue where that could be. Kyle could have easily turned around and gone south or west, and there was no way of knowing how far he'd been able to get.

Nick had continually scanned the road ahead for signs, but had only seen mile markers, slowly ticking down one number at a time. He'd passed twenty-one of them since he'd left the quarry.

At least the sun was dependable.

He found an SUV that had gone into a ditch as the sunlight was brushing against the edge of the trees again. Nick climbed down carefully, pulling out his pistol as he crept up to it. One of the backdoors was open, frosted with snow. He'd thought at first that the owner must have left it in a hurry, until he peered closer and saw deep claw marks on the inside of the door. A zombie must have dragged the passenger out, he figured, dragging them into the woods or wherever. They could have died just feet away; he wouldn't be able to tell from the snowfall.

Nick hoisted himself inside, pushing the snow off of the door and closing it behind him. The seats were at a crooked angle, and most of the floor was dusted with snow, but anything was better than being outside. He crawled into the back and reclined against the stiff cushions, staring at the fabric ceiling above him as he wallowed in the feeling of burning soreness in his legs. The wind blew against the windows and he turned over until he was facing the back of the seat, pressing his face against the worn-down fabric.

He rubbed his forehead against it, shutting his eyes and smiling at the sensation, soft fuzz instead of harsh concrete. Letting out a long sigh, he lay and rested in the growing darkness gathering around the SUV. His stomach growled and he curled tightly into a ball in an effort to ignore it, but it wouldn't relent.

Nick eventually sat up and chewed a piece of licorice, staring into the dark. The taste was strong and bitter and he wasn't sure if it was safe to eat or not. He swallowed it anyway, willing his stomach to be happy with the offering.

The wind picked up outside, and soft tapping against the SUV's windows told him that the weather had gone from snow to rain. Did it mean that winter was ending and spring was coming? How long had he been in that facility?

He tried not to think about it as he tucked himself back into a fetal position, pulling the hood of the jacket over his face and breathing into the pocket of warmth created by it and the SUV's seat. His mind turned in slowing circles, memories of sounds and images, and when he finally slept he dreamt of damp concrete and hissing water.

* * *

The next day wasn't much different than the last. Nick wandered down the quiet road, pausing every hour for rest and nibbling sparingly on the little food he had with him. He began to fear that he was lost; all he had seen for miles and miles were trees and snow. Or that his mind had finally broken and all it could see were the woods.

At least the rain had let up overnight, leaving everything a wet, slushy mess. The boots kept the damp out, but he wished he had socks; the sides of his feet were beginning to sting with what he assumed were growing blisters.

Nick had his head bent to keep the sun out of his eye, hands shoved in his pockets as he marched forward. He was so focused on the ground directly ahead of him that he nearly wandered right past a sign. The only reason he didn't miss it was because the wind rattled it a bit, and he'd jumped, whirling about to find the source of the noise.

The sign was tall, with text visible behind the snow melting down it. He went over, slipping carefully down then climbing back up the other side of the ditch to get closer. Nick reached up and brushed away as much of the snow as he could, uncovering the names of two cities: _RUTLAND, 26 MILES. MONTPELIER, 87 MILES._

He was surprised at how quickly his mind was able to remember and determine where Montpelier was _—_ Vermont. Somewhere near the center of the state, he thought.

A harsh laugh came from his mouth and turned into a cough after a few seconds.

_Vermont._ He'd made it to _Vermont._ From North Carolina. Maine was just one more state away. Right through New Hampshire, and he'd be there. A couple hundred miles, if that.

The new information put a buzzing sense of excitement in his head and body, and he returned to the road, walking a bit faster. He was going to make it. He was going to _make it_. The cruise ship, the subway tunnels, the frozen lake _—_ all of it was behind him and Maine was right in front of him.

Then, _Remember that map,_ his mind told him, and he couldn't tell which half it was, _their safe zone's all the way past the state line. You'll never make it that far alone._

Nick shook his head, whispering a firm '_Fuck you_' to that voice before strengthening his steps.

"I'm coming, guys. I'm on my way."

* * *

By the end of the day he was down to just a couple of pieces of licorice and cracker crumbs. Water wasn't an issue; there was plenty of snow around for that. The energy that had filled him from learning his location had long faded and he struggled to keep his steps straight, keeping his eye open for a car or something to take shelter in. This had not been a heavily-traveled road before the zombies came; he'd seen only a few cars and the SUV from yesterday. The last car had been hours ago. He hadn't stopped. He'd been sure he'd find something by the end of the day.

It was starting to get dark again. Nick felt anxiety creeping up on him. He didn't want to be stuck in the dark, unable to see. The lighter was still in his pocket but it wouldn't be as helpful as a flashlight, which, of course, he didn't have.

The slush squelched underneath his boots as he tried to hurry, to find something to take shelter in before the sun disappeared over the treetops. There was a small road that split away from the main one that Nick had been walking the past two days. He'd seen quite a few of them, but since the first had eventually shrunk and turned into a twisting trail through the woods, he hadn't dared to travel another one. As far as he could see, the main road held nothing; there wasn't a car or truck in sight.

Nick let out a breath. There wasn't much of a choice. He turned and started down the side road, peering into the trees as he passed them. Maybe there would be a car tucked away in there.

Nothing appeared, and the brewing anxiety in his gut began to crawl up his throat as the sun began to sink down over the trees. He continually scanned the darkening road ahead, but it was empty _—_

Then, he saw a tiny path snaking off into the trees. He looked down it, searching the trunks, and saw the hard edge of _something_, but he wasn't sure if it was _more trees_ or what he hoped it was. Nick shivered and turned to hurry down the little trail, stumbling over the uneven ground.

He came round a gentle bend and saw a trailer hitched up on cinder blocks, jammed into the trees. A body was draped over the tow hitch. Nick glanced at it as he came closer, barely able to make out the small, spray-painted symbol of a cross inside a square. A safe house. Not much of one.

More than enough for him.

Nick climbed up the single step to the door. It had been reinforced with corrugated sheet metal, claw marks ripped across it. There were old blood smears on the siding and what he assumed were more bodies curled up along the outer wall. The doorknob wouldn't budge, but he gave the door itself a firm shove with his shoulder and it opened. Small blessings.

He shut the door behind him and used his lighter to take a look around. Most of the furniture was gone, except for a table against one wall. Nick couldn't find anything on top of it, but then the fire glinted off of the edge of something metallic, and he bent down and fished out an old electric lantern from underneath.

Nick set the lighter carefully upright on the table and turned the lantern over, trying to figure out how to turn it on. There was a little dial on the bottom that he turned all the way up. Light built inside the lantern, but it wasn't very strong. He closed the lighter and set the lantern on the table, watching as the weak glow brightened marginally. Maybe the battery needed time to warm up.

He turned and saw, even in the dim light, a wall filled with writing. Different colors and different names. This had been a busy safehouse. Now it was silent and empty. He let out a breath and hugged himself as he moved closer, squinting at the wall.

_Gwen, stayed for two days with Penny. Left September 8th. Love you._

_Frank do NOT GO BACK TO THE STATE LINE. Maude has the kids. Heading to evac in Montpelier._

Nick trailed slowly across the room, reading each and every word that had been written on the cheap wallpaper. Before now, he hadn't much cared what messages strangers had left behind for others, had just brushed his eyes over the words without really retaining them. This time he was reading every letter, tracing a finger over the different lines, reminding his mind that other people had existed and lived and been here before him.

_RIP Michelle, RIP Oliver, RIP Harold._

_Aster I took the Chevy from storage & me & Gerald are going north. Evac in MP._

It was one long memorial to the world that had long crumbled away, lives that had been extinguished ages before he'd come here. Some of the letters were faded and he couldn't read them. Dates of birth, dates of death. All piled on top of each other, lost to everyone. Nick tried to memorize them. He felt that he was the last person who would read the words, the last one who would understand what they meant.

He got to the end of the wall. The letters seemed more jagged and rushed.

_CARRIERS STAY AWAY FROM SHAFTSBURY. RESEARCH FACILITY._

_i can't go any further im sorry carla i love you so much_

_Jennifer I wish I could have found you in Manchester but it's over now it's all over_

_I MISS YOU SUSAN. JAN 21ST._

Nick read them all, then turned and walked back up the way he'd come, reading them again. The lantern flickered softly on the other side of the room, the weak light shivering with every step he took on the ancient, creaking floor. He listened to the wind rattle against the storm windows, and then sat down, pressing his back against the table that held the lantern, resting his arms on his knees.

He pushed his hands against his hair and sighed. It was worthless to hope for a message from _them_. They likely hadn't come through here. If they were still alive.

_That_ half of his mind roused, trying to tell him _Nope, they're dead, why do you even bother,_ but he forced it down and stood back up, wincing at the sore stinging in his legs. He picked up the lantern and took it with him as he went to take a closer look around. It was a tiny, one-bedroom trailer, and the bedroom itself had been cleared out with only a few sleeping bags spread out on the ground. He gathered up the sleeping bags and brought them back to the room with the table.

He was nervous to check the kitchenette, only because he feared to find nothing at all. It reminded him of the days before Kyle and that constant horrible hunger pain below his ribs. Two pieces of licorice weren't going to get him very far.

The lantern seemed to be brightening a bit more. Nick set it down on the counter, wrinkling his nose at the smell of stagnant water as he pawed through the cupboards and mini fridge. Empty. He ran his fingers over his hair again, forcing down the curse that was trying to come out of his throat. Freaking out wasn't going to help him. He tried to rein in the horrible thoughts running through his head as he bent down and looked under the sink. Nothing there, either. Picked clean.

Nick pushed away from the counter, knowing that he shouldn't have expected anything, and also knowing that the news shouldn't feel so unfamiliar. He rubbed his stomach and picked up the lantern, taking a glance into the last spot he hadn't checked _—_ the bathroom. It smelled like the facility and he hurriedly shut the door and moved on.

The lantern cast his own shadow behind him as he moved back to the main room with the wall of writing. He poked around, noting bloodstains on the carpet next to the door and a few cardboard boxes next to the legs of the table. Nick knelt down and opened them up, expecting nothing useful, and in the first one he didn't find anything but a stack of books and a bag of carpenter's tools. He opened the second and was greeted by a sickly-sweet smell that turned his stomach.

Bringing the lantern close, he overturned its contents. A small mesh bag of some sort of fruit squelched to the floor. He didn't know what they'd once been, but they had begun to smell like fermenting alcohol. Instead of dealing with the smell, he took them to the door and tossed them out into the snow.

A couple of boxes had fallen out too, and they made a promising rattling noise as Nick picked them up. Pasta noodles, bow-tie and penne. Words that shouldn't have mattered much to him, but his brain remembered what they were and even brought up a few recipes he'd used in the past.

He turned one of the boxes over, looking for an expiration date, but the text was too small and he couldn't read it. They were both sealed and the cardboard was only a little damp. Salvageable, he thought.

Nick took a drink from one of his water bottles and broke open the package of bow-tie pasta, not even wanting to bother with finding a cooking pan and a flame and enough water to boil it. He ate it slowly, wishing the sound of crunching weren't so damned loud. Maybe it would expand in his stomach and make him feel less hungry.

He ate a handful and gathered up the sleeping bags, wiggling into one and throwing the other over himself for extra cover. It was warmer than he thought it'd be and he drifted into sleep as he watched the lantern flicker weakly on the table.

* * *

He woke up screaming.

The dream disintegrated the second he opened his eyes but fear pulsed icily in his body, turning his thoughts on themselves, forcing panic up his throat as he scrambled out of the sleeping bag and down the hall to find an enemy that wasn't there. The shriek finally died on his tongue and he staggered to a stop halfway to the exit, holding himself up with a hand against the wall, and panted, looking around wildly. The room was empty, cold. No light came in through the windows. The lantern had faded to the pale glow of a near-dead ember.

He sank to his knees, pushing his hands against his head with a long sigh, swallowing to try and force the terror back down his throat. He didn't even know what he'd been dreaming about. That was a bit of a blessing, he thought, but it had been enough to get him halfway across the trailer before he'd even known he was moving.

The cold crept into his limbs and he rubbed his face, slinking back to the sleeping bag. He didn't know what time it was. Knowing his luck he'd only slept twenty minutes, and it wasn't like he'd be able to go _back_ to sleep after a turn like that.

He sat down and brought the lantern with him, tapping it on the floor to try and get the light to switch on again. It brightened and he squinted against it, blinking rapidly. The light was a dirty orange color. It made the entire room around him a sickly shade of yellow. Nick pushed his hands through his stubbly hair and focused on taking slow, deliberate breaths, calming his heart and trying to still his mind.

Outside, he could hear the trees shaking against each other. He clenched his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering and making a similar sound.

Nick stared blearily at the wall across from him, gaze tracing the messages again. He was scared to close his eyes again, scared of what images or memories might flash across his eyelids. Exhaustion chewed at the back of his mind, tearing away the harsh buzz of panic and replacing it with a humming numbness. He kept the sleeping bag tucked around his shoulders and sat waiting for the sun to rise.

The light of the lantern began to fade and eventually died. Nick stayed where he was, listening to his own breathing in the darkness, staring at the boarded window and waiting for light to appear on the other side. It seemed to take days before it showed up. The more time that passed, the more irritated he was that he'd slept so little and been woken up by his own damned head. If he could rid himself of anything, it would be the dreams. The pain and difficulty seeing things and sore ribs he would be able to deal with. Not his own mind turning on him.

Not when it kept telling him things that weren't true, whispering ideas and possibilities that he could never imagine happening. Leaving the facility had quieted it some, but he just wished it would go away completely.

He supposed he was stuck with it now. Or him. Himself.

Nick rubbed at his face and tried to remember the man he'd once been, ages ago.

* * *

The rain came again. Nick left the dingy little trailer early, as soon as it was light enough to see, rolling up one of the sleeping bags and taking the lantern with him. He had to cover as much ground as possible. The road was wet and muddy and the trees were dropping large chunks of melting snow to the ground beneath them, creating sounds that kept making him jump and search for stalking shadows. There was never anything to see.

Nick crunched on the pasta noodles as he walked. They weren't bad. He'd definitely eaten worse. Taste wasn't a demand anymore, not for him, since he'd gotten into siphoning gas and starving to death as hobbies.

The trees finally started to thin out in the afternoon. He could see things past them now _—_ clumped buildings and streets, actual signs of civilization rather than woods as far as the graying sunlight could reach. There was a town ahead, barely visible through the thin sheets of rain and spotty fog. For a few miles, he wrestled with the idea of going around it to avoid an encounter with anything unwanted. At first he was afraid to find zombies, but then he figured they were probably mostly dead; it would just be the military now.

There hadn't been a single sign of anyone living nearby. The last note in the trailer had been dated for late January, and he knew he hadn't even left Eight Springs by then. If Rochelle and the others had come through here, they either hadn't thought to leave a message, or they had given up on him by then.

_Definitely the second one_, his mind growled.

Nick decided he would venture into the city, just a bit. Maybe enough to find some more food, a more decent weapon. He hoped that he'd be able to see signs of military encampment before he stumbled face-first into one. Even a few miles from the outskirts, he couldn't find much. Abandoned and crashed cars, wrecked RVs, things he was used to seeing.

He picked through them only to find they'd already been scavenged bare. Even the trunks, which he started to check, remembering that Kyle had found a few things in one of them. They were all empty.

The rain dripped off of the edge of his hood as he walked. His coat was damp but the layers on the inside were still dry; it didn't stop him from feeling cold the entire time. Occasionally a gust of wind would tear down the road and he'd have to stop and face away from it, wiping his face, trying to minimize his exposure to the water. He wasn't going to freeze to death now, not that he was so close.

Nick walked slowly down a hill toward the city. There were a few road signs but they were torn down and scratched all to hell and he couldn't read them. He hoped the town was the one he'd seen on the sign a few days back; he couldn't remember its name. Rat-something, he thought.

The abandoned cars were starting to become more tightly clumped together, the buildings passing by more frequently. Nick tried to quash the anxiety brewing in his chest. It wasn't D.C., it wasn't New Orleans. If he was going to see something, he would have seen it by now.

When the sun began to set, he kept walking, looking for a house or building that didn't have shattered windows or doors hanging off of their frames. Many of the places looked like they'd been set aflame in the past, or otherwise damaged, either by zombies or vehicles. Thinking back on it, Nick couldn't remember a time when he'd seen an undamaged house or building, a place without at least one cracked window or torn carpeting.

He walked past a sizable hotel, then stopped and retraced his steps. A room deep on the inside would be far enough from the rain that it wouldn't be wet. He needed a chance to get his clothing dried out, or at the very least, his jacket.

The glass door to the foyer had been shattered; he stepped carefully inside, listening to the noise of glass under his feet. It wasn't much different than the sound of the slush he'd been trekking through all this time. He walked past the welcoming desk, stepping over a long-dead and decomposed body, trying to wave away the ripe stench. Wet corpses always smelled the worst.

Nick brought out the lantern as he ventured further down the hallways. Many of the room doors were shut, and the electronic locks were dead and would probably never open again. If he had time tomorrow, he'd go in from the outside, through the windows, and search for supplies. For now, it'd probably be best if he got to a warm spot and got some rest. His boots kept tripping up on things that weren't there as fatigue pressed down heavily on his shoulders.

He prayed he wouldn't dream again, but he knew he would. All he wanted was one night. One time where he didn't shock himself awake or come to in the morning covered in icy, terrified sweat. Just six hours. It wasn't much to ask.

As Nick came around the corner, mulling things over in his mind, he lifted his head and his eye caught movement at the end of the hallway. He saw the figure of another person down there, framed by the light seeping in through the windows.

He moved on instinct, stumbling in his shock and haste. As he flattened himself against the wall, his heart leapt into his throat. Hot bile seemed to coat his tongue. Spotted; he'd been spotted. Nick placed the grocery sack and lantern quietly on the floor, pulling the pistol out from his jacket pocket. He gripped it with both hands, knowing he had a limited amount of ammunition; he was ready to use it as a bludgeon, if it came down to that. Crouched down, he waited for the sounds of approaching feet in the hall behind him.

His mind raced round and round, hysteria clawing at his thoughts. Swallowing, he tried to force the taste of bile back down his throat, feeling like his heart was about to give out. In the slim seconds that had passed, the answer to who the stranger was became clear. A survivor would have called out to him, but not a zombie. Not a soldier. Not an enemy. They'd come for him.

Nick let out a thin breath. _Not going back there. Not going back._ "I... I don't mean any harm," he called out with a faltering voice. He hadn't spoken aloud with the intent to be heard since the facility. His voice cracked with disuse. "I just want to pass through."

It was quiet. Did he hear movement down the hall, or was that the rain outside?

"I _—_ I have a gun," he continued, wincing at how weak his own words sounded. "I don't w-want to shoot anyone."

There was nothing.

Nick inched over to the corner, peering around the wall. The hallway was dim and wet. Water dripped from the ceiling, pooled on the carpet. A breeze blew at the back of his head from the foyer behind him.

"...Hello?"

He wiped his face with his arm and crept around the corner. Down at the end of the hall was a bathroom _—_ this was where that other person had been standing. Now it was empty.

Nick blinked slowly. It had always been empty.

He lowered the pistol as he stepped into the bathroom, squinting at the tall mirror installed on the wall. Light from the foyer bloomed behind him, casting the image of his silhouette on the glass.

His own reflection. He'd been scared by his own reflection.

Nick closed the rest of the distance and stared at himself, turning his head from side-to-side to confirm the identity of the ragged, terrifying creature on the other side of the glass.

It was him.

He stared for a long time, seeing the fear and the desperation in his own eyes... eye. The uninjured one was wide and terrified. The other looked about the same. Overall, pretty pathetic. He studied his threadbare clothes, his sunken, pale face, the hair that had barely started to grow back. He looked like a stranger. A ghost.

He looked like a goddamned zombie.

Hands trembling, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the pistol and lifted it like a club.

Nick brought it down upon the mirror, smashing it, shattering the hazy glass and the image of the creature he'd become into a thousand tiny pieces. When the mirror was nothing but a frame leaning haphazardly against the wall, he started crushing the shards on the floor. He wanted to turn them into dust, into nothing, like the rest of the world, like what he'd soon become himself.

But exhaustion and the deep dark smothering feeling of helplessness pressed down upon him, and after a few minutes he slumped to the ground, panting and sobbing. The floor was damp and cold. He shivered. His stomach snarled, and he wanted to chide it. That wouldn't help anything. It wouldn't change how little he had left. How much he'd have left by the next day.

Nick stared at the wall across from him, slowly catching his breath.

_You're not going to make it._

There would be nothing for him here, in this place, or the next _—_ if he even made it that far. He was dead already. And right now _—_

_It's over. It's over for you._

_—_Right now, he was just in his death throes.

_Just lie down and die._

Trembling, he tucked his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his arms.

He missed his dog.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Vicks._

_****__NOTICE: If everyone could please avoid posting major spoilers in the reviews I would really appreciate it. We're getting close to the end now and I know many people (including myself) usually read the reviews before they dive into a long fanfic. I'd hate for someone to be spoiled for anything big._

_Thanks for reading!)_


	41. The Gambler

**NOTICE. PLEASE READ.**  
Do not spoil the ending if you review. **DO NOT SPOIL THE ENDING IF YOU REVIEW.** I've spent three years of my life and 220,000 words to get this far. Please don't ruin it! If you'd like to discuss the ending with me, I'm available on all sorts of places. (Check the About on my Tumblr, there's a link on my ff.n profile.) **Please, please, PLEASE be courteous.** Thank you.

Enjoy!

* * *

By the time Nick had pulled his thoughts together enough to get back up, the sun had gone from the sky and the only source of light was the dying gleam of his lantern, down the hall and around the corner. He gathered it and his bag back up, wandering further into the motel. His steps were slow and awkward as he turned into another hallway, moving deeper inside. He chose an open door the closest to the center of the building he could find, and trudged into the room.

There was a body on the floor wrapped in a blanket. The bed was bare, save for some faded stains that had probably been there for years. Nick set the lantern down on the bedside table and let himself fall forward onto the mattress, watching dust motes fly up and catch in the dim light. He hadn't laid down on a bed since Eight Springs. The fabric underneath him smelled musty, but it was a better smell than that of the corpse; he pressed his nose into the cushion and breathed in the scent of that instead.

He tried to ignore the roiling thoughts in his mind, words telling him over and over how useless it was to keep going, how futile it would be to wake up the next day. Nick sighed, pulling the blanket off from around the body on the floor and kicking off his boots before curling up into a tight ball in the middle of the mattress. He remembered his hotel room in Eight Springs and the comforting pressure of the dog laying next to him, and shut his eyes.

After a long while of laying in silence without sleep, he gathered up his bag and set it on the mattress next to him, trying to emulate the feeling of having something nearby, something to protect him, to keep him warm. Something that gave a shit about him. His mind kept going through dozens of visions of what could have happened to the dog. All of them had the same ending.

Nick pressed his back against the bag and begged inwardly for sleep, but all he got was a few hours of fitful dreaming of watery corridors and plumes of fire crawling into the sky, and then he laid where he was until light started seeping into the hallway outside. He kept closing his eyes and pressing his face against the mattress, trying to fall asleep again, but nothing happened, his mind just kept turning and turning.

With a long sigh, he sat up on the bed. The smell of the corpse greeted him. He probably should have moved it out of the room, but he supposed it didn't matter, since he was just going to leave anyway. Nick bent down and put his boots on, wishing they had gotten a bit more dry. He knew how bad it was to walk with waterlogged shoes, how dangerous an infection he could get from something like that. Someone had told him, he thought. Not very long ago, his mind knew, though it felt like ages. Back in Eight Springs. The kid whose face and voice he couldn't remember.

"Sean," he mumbled out loud. Yeah, that was his name.

It was painful, how much he missed that place. If he were brave enough, he would have gone in the opposite direction and returned there instead of pushing northward, but that would put him closer to the facility, and just thinking about the cage and the concrete again was making his heart race in his chest and try to climb out of his throat.

He tied the laces of his boots and stood up off of the bed, picking up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. The blanket he carefully folded and took with him. A yawn tried to come out of his throat but he forced it down and stepped back out into the hallway, blinking against the silvery morning light coming in through the foyer and broken windows of the nearby open rooms. He could already hear the whistle of the wind outside, and when he turned the corner it brushed against his face, a sharp, biting cold.

"_Great_," he grumbled, pulling the hood of the jacket up over his head. It wasn't raining or snowing, but it was still freezing outside, making the layers he wore feel completely worthless. He tried bunching the coat up more around his shoulders but it didn't do any good. Nick listened to his teeth chatter and watched his breath puff into the air as he continued walking, keeping himself close to the buildings to try and minimize his contact with the wind.

His stomach growled and he ate a few pieces of the dry pasta to try and get it to be quiet. The buildings creaked around him much like the trees on the roads earlier had, but there were no other noises besides the wind and his own feet on the slushy sidewalk. Nick hummed under his breath. He couldn't stand how silent it was, and wondered if there was anything alive at all out here. Everything was still and grey, almost unreal. He felt that if he reached out to touch anything it would shatter, like designs on a piece of fragile glass.

But he kept walking, because it was the only thing he could do, trying to keep himself pointed northward as much as possible. By midday he'd left the empty town behind him and passed back onto the wooded roads. The wind picked up and the trees' whispers turned to sharp, constant rattling above him. Nick kept his clothes bundled up as much as he could around him to fend off the cold, but it didn't matter. He still felt frozen to the core.

His mind would not stop whispering to him.

_You're going to die. You're going to die out here. Right here, on this road. You're going to freeze to death._

It was no longer taunting. Just factual. He found that he couldn't argue with it.

_It's going to hurt. A lot. You'll lie down on that asphalt and the cold's going to take you._

Nick glared at the road beneath him, as if it were the thing digging those words into him. He hated himself and his stupid fucking broken brain, but most of all he hated the Godforsaken place that had done that to him. If he didn't fear returning to the cage, he would have turned around and made sure it had burned to nothing, Carter and the others be damned.

_See how you can't stop your shivering? That's hypothermia, and it's going to be what kills you._

He rubbed his forehead, wishing it would stop, praying for it to just be silent.

_It doesn't matter. They aren't going to want you. Nobody wanted you in the first place. Definitely not now that you're insane._

"I'm not," he mumbled under his breath. "I'm not, I'm not, I'm _not_."

There was no reply to that, because he already knew what the truth was.

* * *

That night he found shelter in the canopy of a truck that had been hauling lumber. It smelled strangely unfamiliar to him as he climbed in and sat down, digging out his lantern and turning it on. The floor was ridged and uneven and impossible to get comfortable on. Not that the word 'comfortable' was still available to Nick's vocabulary. He ended up leaning halfway over the wheel well, head against the window, curled up as tightly as he could get with his clothes bunched around him. When he woke up after the few broken hours of sleep he got, his back felt like he'd been laying on a bed of nails all night. He sat and chewed on the uncooked pasta as he gazed blearily out of the canopy window, waiting for the sun to rise. The food was running low again. He tried not to think about it, and tried not to eat anymore, but his stomach _hurt_ from emptiness and it was starting to feel like a knife under his ribs, constantly. The same way it had felt in those few days before Kyle had picked him up. At least he could anticipate what was next. Not that he could do much about it.

Over the course of the day he ate the last of the pasta. There had only been about a cup of it left. It was all he had. He dug through car trunks and hollowed—out buildings and anything else he came across, but there was no food to discover. Absolutely nothing. He should have spent more time in the city, should have gone searching around there before taking off for the roads again. Too late now. If he turned back he would die before he reached it and he already knew the road back was empty. All he could do was push on and pray he would get lucky, that he would find something to eat, _anything_ that would stop the sapping, indefatigable pain under his sternum.

He found nothing, and it was slow going. There was a constant terror that he would pass out while walking on the road and die of hypothermia. He ran out of energy quickly and was only able to walk in short bursts before he'd have to rest somewhere. Every time it took a little bit longer for him to get back up. By the afternoon, he couldn't force himself back to his feet anymore. There were no houses to take shelter in, just one lonely sedan that was locked; he broke a window to get in and curled up in the backseat, shivering and hungry, but there was nothing to eat and his blanket wouldn't ward off the cold. He couldn't sleep, so he stared at the floor, through the floor, for hours, mind humming with the same repeated phrases and thoughts he'd had in the cage. He'd thought exhaustion would take him at the very least, and although he hovered at the edge of sleep the entire night, he never found it.

He was still in a haze when light started to appear on the horizon, and when he noticed it he assumed he was simply hallucinating. His entire body felt frozen and stiff, like a granite statue. He was shivering so hard that he thought he might puke from motion sickness— that is, if there was anything in his stomach to bring up. Nick leaned his forehead against the car door, having difficulty holding it up on his own. He'd never felt so tired. Not even when he'd had anemia in the facility.

It took him at least an hour to get out of the sedan and back on the road. There were no clouds in the sky and the sunlight was blinding; he squinted to try and shield them but they still hurt anyway. It was disorienting. He was moving automatically now, his mind taking a backseat, rolling around and around in rising, sluggish confusion.

He kept walking but he didn't even know where he was anymore. He didn't even know what direction he was going in, if it was the correct one or not. Nick kept stopping, looking down both ends of the road, trying to figure out where he was going, but he couldn't remember, his mind couldn't come up with any words. His stomach was a constant wall of pain that wouldn't relent, no matter how much snow he stuffed into his mouth to try and simulate food.

Nick thought it might be mid-afternoon when he found an RV parked in a ditch next to an old Ford truck, but it was all a blur and a day might have passed already. He tried to climb carefully down to it but he got dizzy around the halfway mark and ended up tumbling through the snow and ending up in a half-curled position on the ground at the bottom. His mind buzzed but he could no longer hear what it had to say. He'd heard it all anyway. There weren't any thoughts anymore, just impulses, instincts that were still trying to work.

He stayed in the snow for a long while because he couldn't get up. He'd lost track of time. How long had it been since he'd left Shaftsbury? How many days had passed since he'd eaten? Nick lay where he was, breathing slowly, wondering idly if he was about to die. He wished he would.

A loud noise startled him and he lifted his head as much as he could just in time to see a bird take off from the roof of the trailer. He'd forgotten about the trailer being there, even though he was less than ten feet away. The lack of memory was a sensation that he knew was supposed to terrify him, but he felt detached from his own body, and he was no longer sure that he knew what terror was supposed to feel like.

Nick got an arm underneath him and tried to get up. It took a long time before he could carefully work his uncooperative body into an upright position. He sat and stared at the snow for what might have been hours, feeling nothing but the static in his head and the distant chill in his skin.

He had no idea what time it was when he finally worked himself back to his feet, he didn't know what day it was or how long he'd been lying at the bottom of the ditch. Nick staggered clumsily up to the door, pawing at for a few minutes with a strengthless hand before his mind made the connection and he remembered how to turn a doorknob. When he got inside he collapsed again before he could even shut the door. He curled up on his side once more, trembling.

"...I'm dying," he whispered out loud, to nobody at all; not even his own mind would listen to him anymore. "I'm dying." He didn't want to accept it, but the rest of his body did it for him as he slowly curled his limbs back up, lying like some crumpled, discarded thing on the floor of the trailer. "I'm scared," he breathed, but there was nothing to answer him and nobody to help him.

So he struggled back into a sitting position and stayed in it for a while, unsure if he could move any further. He felt like something that was dead already, a hollowed-out shell without anything but cold air inside of it. His mind had slipped away and he couldn't bring it back. He stared at the floor, patiently waiting to see if he was going to end up face-down on it again.

Time seemed to come and go with random, jittery stops. He was sitting and he'd blinked slowly, trying to concentrate, but when he opened his eyes again it was dark. Nick made his way to the opposite wall, to sit against it, just something to touch so he could remind himself he was still alive, but by the time he got there it was light out again. He brushed the wall with stiff, clumsy fingers and leaned his forehead against it, breathing slowly.

It took him a long time to realize there was writing on the wall and even longer for him to try to read it. He kept having to go back and read the previous words again because he couldn't remember them, he couldn't retain what he saw, it all came into and phased out of his mind without sticking, like water through a sieve. Nick leaned closer, as if that would help clear up his confusion, but nothing helped.

There was one word that he kept going back to. He traced his quaking fingers over it, struggling to understand what it was. Four letters long. He couldn't figure it out. Nick stared and stared for ages and then he was finally able to decipher it, his mind sluggishly turning over the four letters and chaining them together into a word that he could understand:

'NICK', it said. It was his own name. Wasn't that his name?

He tried to read the words after it, but it might as well have been in a different language. His brain just couldn't comprehend it. Nick leaned his forehead against the wall, staring at them, trying to at least understand just one, _any_ of them, knowing somewhere deep in his head that it was important and he _needed_ _to read it._

He started crying out of pure frustration, unable to read what it said and unable to bring his mind out of that thick haze to try and decipher it. Someone started talking and it was him, mumbling 'Please, please, please,' over and over as he pressed his hands against the wall and fought to maintain concentration.

Nick let out a broken, gasping sob, lifting his head and slamming it back down on the wall. The words written in front of him wavered and seemed to fade back and forth, in and out of visibility. He just wanted to read it. He just wanted to read it. Nick removed one hand from the wall and dug his fingers painfully into his hair, trying to force himself back, to drag his mind into clarity.

He attempted to start breathing more calmly, focusing on the words again, tracing the letters with a finger as he slowly tried to take them in. Nick tried to say it out loud but his voice wouldn't work and he silently skipped his eye over the letters, tracing them with a shivering finger. He lost focus as soon as he looked away from them. Pay attention, pay attention. Nick rubbed his forehead roughly against the wall, distracting himself with the pain.

His thoughts churned slowly and began to quicken in panic, wallowing in the basic fear instinct of being near death. Clarity buzzed in and out of his brain and he fought to cling to it, to any part of him that would cooperate. He dragged his fingernails roughly against his skull, and started concentrating on the pain, pulling himself back to cognizance with the sensation.

Nick swallowed, taking a deep breath, trying again to read it. Nothing worked anymore. It felt like he was sinking in quicksand; the more he struggled, the faster he was going down.

_Fuck it_, his mind seethed, all of a sudden, of its own accord. _Keep going._

_It doesn't matter, the words don't matter._

_Keep fucking going._

He knew he was close to his destination, he had to be, even if he couldn't remember what his destination was anymore. Most of his memories were walled off and he couldn't access them.

_Get up. Walk._

Nick dragged his fingernails along his skull again, letting out another fragmented noise as he braced his hands on the wall and tried to stand. Vertigo took him immediately and he nearly bashed his skull open on the table next to him, the table he hadn't even noticed until just now. He scrabbled to hold onto it, to use it to keep himself upright.

_Fucking walk._

He swallowed again, letting out a breath as he turned his head to look at the door. It was still open, and snow had drifted in and made a thin blanket over the carpet. There was light outside and he still didn't know what day it was. For some reason he felt the need to go outside. Something was telling him that there was something out there, but he wasn't sure what it was, or why it was suggesting it. It felt like a memory but he couldn't remember it happening in the first place. He was so disoriented that he didn't even know which thoughts were real and which were just broken images created by his rapidly malfunctioning brain.

Nick pushed himself away from the table, staggering back to the door. It was the most he'd moved in days— although he didn't know how long he'd been in the trailer, and he couldn't remember finding it in the first place. He clung to the doorjamb with pale, trembling fingers, staring out at the snow. There was a truck outside— he couldn't recall if it had been there before or not. Was he hallucinating?

As he took the last steps to go outside, he continued clinging to the edge of the door, terrified of falling down again. If he did, he'd be dead. He knew there wasn't enough left in him to get back up again.

He left the door to the trailer open as he stumbled out toward the truck, walking like a man with alcohol poisoning, disoriented and confused. Nick got to the driver's side and managed to get his hand on the door handle— it was unlocked and for some reason he already _knew_ that, he already _knew_ he was going to be able to get inside.

It took him a long few minutes to climb into the seat and once he did he laid limp against the steering wheel, taking slow breaths and gazing emptily out the windshield. There were random words in his head that he couldn't remember hearing in the first place. _Keys in ignition._ He lifted a strengthless hand and ran his fingers over the steering wheel and down to where his fragmented thoughts were guiding him. They were there. He felt a low laugh come from his own chest but it was a strange noise to his ears.

Nick turned the keys and the truck came to life underneath him, rumbling softly and obediently. He couldn't understand what the hell was happening. Hallucinations, most likely, although he wasn't sure he'd know if he was having one. He struggled to sit back up, gazing blearily out the windshield, half-conscious, quickly losing his focus again.

He grabbed the gearshift and put it into drive. The truck inched forward, through the snow and up the highway, creeping slowly along. Nick could barely see what he was doing. He kept the wheel steady, and assumed he was dreaming, or hallucinating, and that it'd all be over soon. The truck moved slower than Nick could walk.

Everything he'd had, he left in that trailer. He'd forgotten all about his supplies, the gun and the water bottles and his blanket. They stayed in a pile against the wall of the trailer, underneath a message written in jagged black ink by someone who wasn't good at spelling.

_ Nick it's Ellis and we passed thru here in Janrary I think 9th or 10th. _

_ we are Almost to maine its just a few hours away by car. coach dont _

_ even talk about you no more and rochele won't ether. I know your _

_ out there even if they dont think so. if there is still a white truck __outside use it i left it for u_

_ keys in ignition __keep going u are almost there._

_ Ellis._

He knew, but he didn't know. He'd read the words but he couldn't interpret them, but somewhere in his brain he had, and while he wasn't sure how he knew about the truck, he was still sure he _knew _something.

He was too confused to try and get it straight.

* * *

It took him two hours to drive the truck into a ditch. He couldn't see where he was going and he had started to forget he _was driving a vehicle_ by the time it happened, and by then the truck had tipped down and gone nose-first off the road. It might have kept going if there wasn't a tree on the other side, but instead the truck rammed into it, knocking out half the headlights and deploying the airbags.

Nick couldn't remember much after that. He thought he felt blood running down his face but he wasn't sure, it might have also been tears. His chest screamed with pain for a long time until he got used to it and stopped wondering what had happened. He could no longer sit up, so he lay down across the seats, trying to curl up, trying to stay warm, but he couldn't move or talk or think.

It didn't hit him like a slap in the face, or even fast and hard, like a bullet. The realization came over him as a slow, silent wave of icy water, colder than the wind outside, colder than anything. He didn't even know how far he was from the safe zone, or if he was even in Maine at all, or if _they _were even alive, but none of it mattered at all because—

Because—

He was dying. Really dying.

He wasn't sure how. It didn't even matter, really. He knew the throb of hunger pains were still there, and the sharp agony in his chest was still there. One or the other.

With some effort, Nick turned his head until he could see out the windshield. The clouds were bunched up in that pale sky with the setting sun, dancing with the jet stream, bright and cheery. Mocking him, for sure. He stared at them because there was nothing else to stare at, and he wanted something to occupy his mind. In the clouds, he imagined he saw things, like dogs and kids running and buildings. It felt like the whole world was spinning even though he was lying on his back on worn leather.

_Hey, you, get off of my cloud._

When he tried to get up, his whole body felt as if it were tied down to the seat, like his brain had severed its connection to his limbs and muscles. There wasn't any energy there, anymore. There wasn't anything anymore. He wondered what was still letting him breathe if he couldn't even _move_, he wondered how long it would take for his heart to slow and eventually stop, like an unwound clock, _tick tick tick._ He managed to lift one arm, heavy and awkward, and then he wasn't sure what he was going to do with it in the first place, so he just dragged the hand down his face. His fingers were icy and numb, and his face was icy and numb; it was a lot like rubbing two inanimate objects together.

He hadn't stopped shivering for what seemed like a decade, and he found that he couldn't stop himself from doing it anymore. His whole body just vibrated rhythmically, reminding him of his old cell phone. The hand he lifted lay on his chest which rose and fell with a frighteningly slowing rate. He was _watching_ _himself die_, he realized. His brain was just cognizant enough for him to figure this out, and instead of feeling terror he only felt minor curiosity. It was strange, how he thought he could actually feel his heart weakening in his chest. A funny little sensation. How many people could say they knew what that felt like?

_Well, none,_ his mind told him. _Because they're _dead_._

And for some reason he found this to be incredibly hilarious, and he laughed. The sound was a scratchy, alien noise in his throat and it startled him when he heard it. Then he laughed again.

For a lifetime, he stared at the sky, at the sun slipping behind the clouds, curving down to the jagged line of the earth he knew was there but couldn't see. The color was stunning, vibrant, and he couldn't stop looking at it, the reds, the purples, and the gray of the clouds layered in front. Just like the lake. Just like when Terry died.

_I got pretty far, though... didn't I...?_

He sluggishly casted about for his memories, but found most of them too hard to grasp. There were only a few moments that he could recall, and they replayed in his head, slow and incessant.

As a child, his mother had a small fishtank. He'd seen the little guppies darting in and out of a falsely mossy castle, colorful tails flashing back and forth. Then he saw the guppies on the floor, flopping and gasping as they died.

_Nicholas, you broke the fish tank?!_

Sorry, Mom.

When he'd met the woman that would be his wife. When he married her.

_Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded..._

I do. I do. I do.

_Nick, I'm pregnant._

I love you. I love you.

_I hate you._

The last time he'd seen her. The way the tears had run through her mascara and painted her cheeks like ash. Her eyes, bright and blue, and furious. She'd paused in the doorway, and caught his eye, and he'd said nothing.

_Don't call me. I never want to see you again._

I'm so sorry.

The bridge. When he'd first seen it, hanging there in the morning fog. Burned in his mind for eternity.

And Rochelle. Sobbing.

_Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that, Nick, you idiot..._

Freezing water. Flooding corridors. A pale sunrise.

His thoughts flickered like the light off of a slowly spinning coin.

_You said it was blood-borne! And you were bleeding!_

I didn't mean to.

_I want to help you. Let me help you._

I'm sorry.

_Do you know what they'll do to you?_

And for a short, sharp second, he felt true fear. It leapt up into his mind with a vehement _no_, but he didn't move, nothing happened. His breaths were starting to come fast and uneven but so, so shallow, and he thought he could feel every atom of air moving past his lips. He couldn't feel any pain, and he was so grateful for that small blessing that he might have tried to laugh again. There was nothing now but a screaming emptiness and a vague, detached feeling of panic, as if it weren't really happening to him, as if he were watching from far, far away.

_Hope. A word with a hole in it._

Everything was rippling into black, and then gray again, then black, then gray.

There was a single, shrieking thought, shooting up suddenly above everything else:

_No, no, no, help me, please help me, please help me._

There was no more time.

_I'm sorry_, he wanted to say. _I tried. I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

Black, gray, black, gray. He wavered interminably, at the edge of everything. He took a too-short last breath and held onto it for as long as he could, and the moment stretched on and on and on until finally it crumpled and shattered. No more time.

The sun slipped down behind the mountains, the light blinked out, and then, there was nothing.

Nothing.

* * *

_(A/N: Thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Vicks. See you in a week for the ending!)_


	42. The Revenant

_**Please don't spoil the ending if you review.**_

* * *

It was a very bright morning, Rochelle thought, as she stood in the dusting of snow in the safe zone backlot. Obscenely bright, and yet the sun did nothing to warm her. Temperatures had dropped to below zero at night, and during the day it never came above the freezing point.

Being that cold, it became difficult to dig a grave.

Rochelle stood next to Ellis and the little mound of dirt encircled in rocks. He'd dug it the afternoon before, chipping away with the shovel until his calloused hands were red and raw. Coach was standing at the head of the grave. His hands were folded over his stomach as he stared down at the pitiful pile of earth and stone.

Ellis wiped at his eyes with futility. He was crying in uneven, silent sniffles.

Rochelle felt like she didn't have any tears left to shed. She'd already come to accept what had happened. Ellis had taken longer— a lot longer. It had taken him months to come to terms with what she'd known the second week out.

Nick was gone.

Now, staring at the grave, it hit her hard. This was a finality. It was over. No longer could she think, _'He's still on his way back to us. He's fine out there. He's still alive_.'

It had been five-and-a-half months since the ship went down.

Yesterday, Ellis had looked her in the eyes and said, "We can at least give him a burial. He deserves that much, doesn't he?"

He did.

The man she'd met all that time ago on the roof of a burning hotel, the man who'd picked her up countless times, and been lifted himself by them. She could still see that wry grin, the one he seemed to save especially for her. She could hear his voice in her head. His words had seemed so unimportant back then, so meaningless. Now she'd give anything just to hear him again, bitching about the cold weather or telling Ellis to shut his mouth.

She wondered if he'd ever really known how much they— _she—_ cared for him.

Nobody was speaking. They all just stared at the grave, as if it were the first they'd ever seen.

Ellis eventually lifted his head. "Isn't someone gonna say somethin'?" His voice was cold and bitter. He hadn't once spoken about Nick as if he wasn't going to show up on their doorstep one day with that disgruntled look on his face and a curse in his mouth.

Five-and-a-half months was too long a time for anyone to be expected to travel alone. Even Nick.

Coach let out a deep sigh. "Yeah. I got some things I can say." He reached up and pulled the knitted cap from his head. His voice cracked roughly as he began, "Nicholas. You were a good man, even if you didn't see it. We did. We couldn't have made it without you. _I_ couldn't have made it without you. Thank you."

Rochelle felt her eyes stinging painfully and rubbed viciously at them. A sob was building up in her chest, but she swallowed it down, where it stewed icily in her gut.

Beside her, Ellis spoke up. "Nick, you were... you were awesome." His voice kept getting interrupted by random hiccups. "I wish I... I wish we'd... gone back. Or something. I'm gonna miss you, brother. I'm gonna miss you a lot."

The sob in her stomach broke. Rochelle sucked it back and squeezed the tears from her eyes.

Coach was twisting the cap in his hands. "Do you think he'd want me to say a prayer?"

"Probably not," Rochelle said, feeling the empty smile on her face. Her voice was on the edge of a wail. "Say one anyway, Coach."

"...All right." The older man cleared his throat and let out a sigh. "The Lord is my shephard, I shall not want..."

Rochelle could barely pay attention to what he was saying. In her mind, over and over, she replayed the last time she'd ever seen him. The terror on his face. How he opened the way for her in the quarantine ward on the ship, operating the door so she could escape. _I'll open it, but you gotta get out. _Cold, icy water gushing through hallways and rooms. _Don't worry about me, I'll be fine._

"...Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..."

_Take care of yourself._

The hours she spent on that little dinghy lifeboat, the horrible wait as the ship sank deeper and deeper into the ocean. When the shrieking jet showed up and began dropping hellfire on the ship, she had been fleeing, trying to avoid being caught amongst the screeching zombies and debris. She'd located the other two, in the city. _Where's Nick?_ they'd asked, but she could only shake her head.

They had waited, or attempted to wait, watching the smoldering mess that had been the cruise ship slowly sink down on the fuzzy horizon. Then they'd been swarmed, overwhelmed, and had to continue on. And Ellis had left his notes, and Coach the supplies.

But everything they'd given was just another mark to add to the tombstone.

"...You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows..."

It was almost funny, really. The first absolutely selfless act Nick had probably ever done in his life had taken his eye. The second had killed him.

"...I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever. ...Amen."

"Amen," Rochelle echoed mechanically.

_Wherever you are, Nick, I hope you aren't hurting any more._ He'd always been so tired.

They walked from the grave. The sad little cinderblock for a headstone sat immobile, spray painted with four simple letters, the man's name.

The sun passed over another day in the Western Maine safe zone of New Bridgton.

* * *

"I think I'm gonna go out for a drive today."

Ellis proclaimed this quietly, during breakfast. It had been a week since their pathetic little memorial. He hadn't talked much since then.

"Well, take Peter with you," Rochelle said, taking a bite of her eggs. "He can help out."

"Nah. I think I want to go it alone this time."

Coach and Rochelle shared a look. This had happened many times before.

"Honey," the latter started, softly, reaching across the table to touch his hand, "I know you think you're going to find him out there, but... but you won't, Ellis. There's nothing out there. Don't you understand? I hate to see you like this. Let it go."

"Just one more time," the younger man said, tugging himself from her grasp and shoving the last of his breakfast into his mouth. He spoke like an alcoholic begging for another drink. "One more look, that's all. I just wanna make sure." He stared at the ground for a minute, then stood up, taking his tray with him and closing himself off from their attempts to change his mind.

"You be safe out there, boy," Coach hollered to his retreating back.

Ellis set his tray on the front counter, and without turning raised his hand to say goodbye. He trotted out of the cafeteria without another word.

The other two sat quietly, both stewing with their own thoughts, before Rochelle spoke up.

"Maybe this is his way of getting through it."

"We all got our different ways of dealin' with... with stuff like that," Coach said, scratching his beard. "This is just his. And if he finds something useful out there, all the more power to him, I suppose."

She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "He's been so mad since the... you know." _The funeral._ "I don't think he was prepared for it, Coach."

"I don't know why he wasn't. We should have all been prepared for somethin' like this. Even all the way back in Georgia, when the really crazy shit was going down." He sighed. "Could've just as easily been you, or Ellis, or me."

She turned and looked at him. "And what if it had been me?"

"Don't ask me that, girl. You know better."

"Would you have stopped looking for me, Coach?" she pressed, pushing her tray aside to rest her arms on the table. "Would you have given up?"

"You know I wouldn't."

"But it was okay to leave Nick behind?"

Coach stiffened. His dark eyes held a rare spark of anger. "Ro', you _know_ we couldn't be hangin' around there. We left him supplies. It was the best we could do."

"'Left him supplies'," she echoed. "We should have hunkered down. Hidden in a basement or something. I bet he... he's..." Rochelle couldn't finish, and ended the sentence with a fragmented sigh. Tears were stinging the corners of her eyes again. It was time to stop. She had cried too much already over this asshole of a man that didn't give a shit about any of them.

But she couldn't forget his face, that last few seconds she'd seen him, on the ship. There had been such fear in his eyes and his voice had been so strained; she'd never heard him speak like that before. The last time he'd touched her, a gentle squeeze to her shoulder. There were so many things that could have happened to him out there, so many possibilities— most of them horrifying.

Maybe he'd drowned on the ship. Dead at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe he'd been dead since they reached the shore and all the worrying she'd done had been useless from the start.

Maybe he'd gotten off, gotten to shore, and been swarmed by the Infected, like Rochelle and the others had. Coach had fought most of them off with a piece of flotsam. There were so _many_. Too many for them to fight off without firearms. So they'd fled, as any intelligent person would do. She told herself, _What good to Nick would we be anyway, if we were dead?_ There was no way he would be able to fight off a horde that size on his own, not even at the peak of his health— which she knew he wasn't. He was weak and clumsy from surgery and his new handicap. Hell, he'd barely been able to walk down a hallway on the ship without bumping into something.

She imagined Nick running into any of the hazards they had, and felt her stomach turn. A Spitter? With the acid that could eat through an entire building? He'd be dead in a second. A Boomer that exploded with the force of a bunker buster and coated them all in a smelly substance with the viscosity of super glue? Two months later and she was _still_ picking pieces of it out of Ellis' hair. And what about the other Infected? The ones they'd had the luck to _not_ run into?

A Charger?

A Witch?

A _Tank_?

The thought of any of these made her nauseous with fear. But the worst, by far, was the thought that he might have run into the military. She'd seen many survivors come and go that talked about what they did in those facilities. Shaved and marked like animals. And their eyes were always so dark and hollow. They spoke of tiny, filthy cages, and military personnel with guns and heavy fists. And needles, needles, needles. It made her sick. And thinking of Nick in that situation made it worse.

She would rather think of him _dead _than in the hands of the military.

That was when Rochelle began to suspect that Coach _did _prefer that Nick was dead. There was less griping and less arguing. And there was no more guilt, no more reminders of how severely Coach had failed him— how they'd _all_ failed him.

Rochelle finished her eggs and left without saying another word.

* * *

It was freezing. Ellis bundled his scarf around his neck, pulled his knitted cap down over his ears, and hunkered deep into the heavy coat as he crossed the parking lot. There was no sunlight, but the snow wasn't falling, nor was the wind blowing. It was enough.

Ellis paused to feed the dogs. There were three of them, all huge, filthy mutts. One of them might have been part shepherd but he didn't know a lot about dog breeds. They were there to be an alarm system. The biggest one came around and nudged him as he was carrying the kibble over to their dishes.

"Hey, Dusty," he said.

Ellis had named all of them. Nobody else had wanted to. Dusty, Rusty, and Annabelle.

They tore into their food voraciously. None of them were in decent shape— hell, none of the survivors in the safe zone could be considered as such— but Ellis had gone scavenging and brought back as many bags of dog food as he could fit in the back of his SUV for them. No matter now much he fed them, they always seemed starved for more.

Ellis watched them for a few minutes before he made his way to the garage and started the big red SUV. He took down a shotgun from the wall and some extra shells, throwing them onto the passenger seat. The gun was only a precaution— like Rochelle had said, the roads were empty. It was too cold.

He set out down the road, heading south as he always did. His eyes scanned the horizon, searching, searching. Every speck down the road or mangled tree could be something.

Ellis picked through it all, and, as always, found nothing.

There was a rounded loop of roads that he preferred to take when he went out looking, passing by the little safehouses that he'd always left supplies in. Two of them had cars that he'd fixed up and left, just in case someone— Nick specifically— came through and needed help. Of course, Coach and Rochelle didn't know about the cars. He didn't want to tell them. Coach would have gotten mad and demanded he go and bring the vehicles back. Ellis was the one who'd found them and fixed them up, so he told himself that the decision was his to make.

It was bright out by mid-morning. He fished the sunglasses out from the glove compartment and slipped them on to prevent snow-blindness. Ellis had never actually gotten it, but Rochelle had. She'd been terrified and hurting, and Ellis had been the one supporting her, not knowing if the blindness was permanent or not.

When they'd gotten to the school, Jacob had explained it.

It baffled Ellis' mind that such a thing could happen, and took steps to prevent recurrence.

He came down one of the southern roads near the state line of Maine, glancing over the too-familiar fields and distant buildings. Just past noon, he reached one of the safe houses. The rusted old sedan was still parked outside, untouched. Everything in the building, untouched. Nobody had been through since the last time he'd checked... which had been a few weeks ago.

Nothing in any of the safe houses had ever been disturbed. Every time he looked, he became a little more frightened, not just that Nick wasn't going to come back, but also that _nobody was ever going to come up here again._ There weren't a lot of survivors left. It was terrifying to think that they were the _only _ones.

The afternoon was creeping closer and closer. He had to turn back, or he wouldn't have enough time to reach Bridgton by nightfall. Something spurned him, as something always did, to keep looking. He had a constant worry that Nick would be out here somewhere, needing help, and he would miss him by miles just so Coach wouldn't glare at him so harshly when he returned.

"Just to the truck," he mumbled to himself. The southernmost supply drop. It was just outside the state line and he didn't check it as often, mostly because it took so damn long to get down there. But he had to look. He had to make sure. If this was the last time he was going to hunt for his friend, he wanted to be positive he hadn't done everything possible to get him back.

Ellis went further. It snowed sporadically for an hour, then stopped again. It was far past noon now. He wasn't going to be back before nightfall at this rate. Already he could hear Coach's disappointed voice and see Rochelle's strained, worried expression.

He needed to know.

Looping around one of the southern highways, he made his way back up north, down a road that would lead him past the other safe house. He wouldn't have time to search it for a sign that someone had been through. Just seeing the truck in the same place where it had been for months would be enough today.

The truck wasn't there.

Ellis felt his heart rocketing up to his throat. He didn't stop to look at the safe house. He didn't even slow his SUV. He looked down at the tracks leading away from the building and sped after them, kicking up snow and ice as he slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

The tracks that he followed veered wildly from side-to-side, as if the driver had been distracted or drunk. Ellis followed them, trying to keep himself calm. It didn't mean anything, he told himself. He replayed Rochelle's voice in his head. _I know you think you're going to find him out there... but you won't, Ellis. _Anyone could have gone through and taken the vehicle. It didn't mean anything.

An hour later and there it was. The tracks leaned to the right, then the left, then back to the right and into the ditch at the side of the road. Ellis' truck was there, front end wrapped around a tree. There wasn't a buildup of snow on it, either. It had been moved recently.

He approached slowly, stopping a few yards away before killing the engine. The shotgun he took up into his hands and loaded, but he kept the safety on.

Tucking his chin down into his scarf, he stepped out into the snow. His breath fogged the air. It was cold. The late afternoon sun bore down on him, glinting off of the truck's white paint, and the untouched snow all around it. There were no footprints anywhere, just tire tracks. Whoever had driven the truck was still inside.

"Hello?" he called, hearing his voice echo across the fields. "Anyone there?"

Quiet, save for the tapping noises of the SUV's settling engine, behind him. Ellis removed his sunglasses and stepped up to the driver's side of the truck, cupping his hands around his face as he peered into the window.

There was a body on the seats, tucked into itself, noiseless and unmoving.

Feeling his jaw drop, he yanked at the door handle. It was locked. Ellis pounded on the window. No response.

So he turned the shotgun around and broke the window with the butt end, fumbling for the door lock. The sound of shattering glass hadn't been quiet, but the body still didn't move. Ellis opened the door and climbed inside the cold cab of the truck, brushing the glass off the seat. With his gloved hands, he tugged gently at the body's stiff arms, moving them away so he could get a look at its face. He blinked at the buzzcut hair, at the rough stubble—

At the diagonal white scars cutting across gaunt but familiar features—

At the face of a man he'd buried a week ago.

"Oh my God—"

Ellis' heart rocketed up to his throat, and anxious nausea swept hot through his body. He grabbed the man's wrist to feel for a pulse. Then, he realized he still had his gloves on, and tore them off, resettling his fingers on the cold, pale skin of the man's neck.

"Oh God, Nick. Come on, man, _please_..."

He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel it.

"Please, please, _please please please_..."

Ellis was trembling so badly that he couldn't tell if he was feeling a heartbeat or his own fingers moving. He sobbed once, swallowed, and brought his ear down to the man's chest. Nick was so cold, he could feel the chill straight through the fabric of his clothes.

He was still saying _please, please_, but silently, mouthing the words, the tears in his eyes making his view of the truck's dashboard flicker and waver. _Be alive be alive be alive._ The body beneath him was quiet. He blurted out another sob, then bit his lip to keep himself silent.

There.

There it was. Weak and slow and thready, but it was there— a flutter, a heartbeat, he was alive—

He was alive.

_He was alive._

Ellis could barely feel the cold anymore as he sank down on the seat. He brushed his hands against Nick's short hair, passed his palm over the scars, taking the man's head in his hands as he started speaking.  
"Nick. Hey, Nick. Hey, buddy. It's Ellis."

There was no response. He hadn't expected one. Wiping the tears viciously out of his eyes, he twisted about and picked the man up, awkwardly maneuvering back out into the snow. Old memories rushed back to him— he remembered when he'd helped Nick to his feet that final time on the bridge, draping the man's arm over his shoulders, all but dragging him to the ramp of the helicopter. He remembered that Nick had never weighed as much as he looked.

Now it felt like he was carrying a child, light and fragile in his arms.

Ellis managed to open the door to the SUV and place Nick into one of the back seats. The emergency blankets he took from the trunk space and tucked tightly around his friend. He scrambled to the front of the car and turned the engine on, twisting the dials of the heater as high as they would go. Then he came back around and squeezed down in the seat with him, rubbing his arms, his shoulders, his chest, speaking softly, as if his words alone could bring the man back.

"All right, buddy. Let's get'cha warm, come on."

Nick still wasn't responding, wasn't even moving. Ellis' heart was twisting in his throat and his stomach felt like it had been filled with lead. Could he have mistaken that heartbeat? Was he just trying to warm a corpse?

"Come back, Nick. Okay? Come on back, now."

He dragged his arms around the man's body and pulled him close, feeling how lean his frame had become. The tears returned to his eyes; he squeezed them shut and kept rubbing, like stimulating a newborn puppy to breathe.

"It's time to wake up, brother. Come on. Wake up. Please wake up."

It felt like ages had passed. The sun had gone down over the horizon, leaving them both in the dark, before the body in his arms began trembling, weakly at first, before sluggishly gaining strength and going into violent tremors. Ellis felt relief sparking in his gut, hot and sudden. A smile spread across his face; he rubbed his eyes against the blankets to get the tears out of them.

"There you are. There you are, Nick. Hey, it's Ellis. I gotcha."

Nick was stiff all over, as if ice had frozen inside his joints and was just now starting to melt. He kept trying to bring his hands up; some sort of reflex, maybe. One leg jerked weakly. After another long handful of minutes, Ellis saw his eyes were half-open, glazed and distant. The right— hazy and bloodshot, and the left— still a milk-white scar. He might have been unrecognizable if not for that distinguishing mark.

"Hey, Nick. Can you hear me? It's me— it's Ellis. Nick, hey. Hey. Listen to me."

The man blinked a few times, gazing out into nothing, spasms wracking him.

"Come on, Nick. Wake up. Talk to me."

He mumbled something with a voice that was mostly air, slurred, incomprehensible. Blinked again. One hand had gotten out of the blankets; his fingers held fast to Ellis' wrist, grip icy and bony and strengthless. Another slow, lazy blink.

Ellis tugged his arm out of Nick's grip and reached up to grab the man's head in his hands, trying to tilt it into better light. There were trails of tears coming from his eyes now— even the ruined one, tracking down his cheeks, collecting in the rough hair of his stubble. The good eye was hazy and unfocused.

Frowning, Ellis reached up to brush the damp tears gently away with the back of his hand.

Nick flinched as if the younger man had struck him, all of a sudden snapping back to partial awareness. He raised his hands, trying to scramble backwards, but the blankets were wrapping him up tight. A small noise of fear came from his throat. His voice was hoarse, breathy, barely audible.

"No, no, no, stay away, stay _away from me_—"

"Shh, shh! It's okay, Nick," Ellis spoke, holding his shoulders, keeping him still. "It's— it's me. It's Ellis. I'm not gonna hurt you—"

"No, no, no no, no... please..." his words were slurring, badly. "..._Please_... don't take me back. Don't... don't take me back there," he begged. "Just _shoot me_."

Ellis shook his head. _Take him back where? _"I'm not gonna shoot you. Because you're gonna be fine."

Nick seemed to be slingshotting from unconsciousness and back again, uncomprehending of the younger man's words, or where he was. He started speaking again, words brittle as he forced them out. "I— I hope I... infect you," he was saying.

"Nick, you're— you're real sick. I'm not... I'm Ellis. It's Ellis. Can you hear me?"

"I hope I _infect you_."

Ellis chewed his lip, tugging the blankets tighter around the shaking form. "It's okay," he said, his words tumbling over one another in their haste to get out, "I'm going to take care of you. It's okay. You're going to be fine, Nick." He rubbed in gentle circles on the man's back, keeping his voice low and gentle. "I've got you. I've got you. I'm gonna take care of you."

Nick let out a soft noise. His teeth chattered. "I'm cold," he whispered.

"I know. I'm tryin' to get you warm."

"Sean... I'm so cold."

Ellis felt his eyebrows tightening down at the unfamiliar name. He shook his head, tucking some of the blankets tighter under Nick's chin. The man was gripping at his free wrist again, fingers tightening down and loosening at random intervals. Ellis went to move Nick's arm back inside the blankets and that was when he noticed the numbers. Dark blue ink tattooed into his forearm. _C-315-024._

His stomach turned and he nearly vomited at the sight of it. Clarity hit him like a heavy weight. The reason for the haircut, the fear, the ratty clothes. The military had gotten a hold of him. He'd been in a research facility. Ellis bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming aloud. There had been so many stories passed around New Bridgton of what they were doing to people in those facilities. Was this the reason why Nick had been so hard to find?

Ellis rubbed his thumb over the numbers. The ink was fresh, but the skin had healed. It had been a while... weeks, maybe even months. He swallowed bile thinking of what Nick would have gone through in such a long time. He'd never felt such a white-hot feeling of anger before. At the military, at the whole world, and surprisingly at _Nick_, the one man he never thought would end up in a place like that. He was supposed to be the most careful of all of them.

Nick coughed, grunted in pain, and started to talk again. "Sean... I lost Rob," he slurred softly, head lolling against Ellis' shoulder. "...I _lost_ him."

"Shh. It's okay," Ellis spoke, shifting around so he could hold Nick against his chest while still keeping him in front of the heater. "Don't worry none about that. Just concentrate on gettin' warm, okay? You're freezin' to death."

Nick coughed twice, and winced, face twisting in pain. "I'm sorry. ...I'm sorry, Sean. I shouldn't have left. I should... shouldn't..." He swallowed, and made a hollow noise in the back of his throat. His voice was strengthless. "You... you... you were right. You were right, Sean. You were right... you were..."

Ellis shook his head, blinking hard. "It's all right, brother. It's all right. Let's move you to the front seat, okay? Get you sittin' next to the heater."

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

Ellis settled him into the front seat, securing the seatbelt over the mess of blankets and body, and adjusted the small heater vents so they all faced him. Then, he climbed into the driver's side and shifted the SUV into gear before driving carefully around the empty Ford, and starting down the highway.

"I can't wait to get you back. Everyone's going to be so happy, Nick. I didn't... I never thought I was gonna see you again." He wiped at his face, trying hard to concentrate on both the road and the shaking body next to him. "Where the hell were you? I looked for you, Nick. On the ship, in the water... it was like you'd gone and vanished."

Nick gave no answer. His head leaned against the window, body shifting bonelessly with the movement of the car. He suddenly took a sharp indrawn breath and started coughing. It was the most horrible sound Ellis had ever heard from someone who wasn't Infected. Nick's whole frame shook with the force of it.

Ellis had to rub his eyes again. "God, Nick. That don't... that don't sound too good. You sound like my gran'. She sounded like that before..." he trailed off, not wanting to say it, suddenly afraid of the very real possibility that his friend could be dying of something more than being cold. "It's all right. I'm gonna get you back to Bridgton, and we're gonna take care of you."

He wished more than anything that Nick would turn toward him and say, '_Shut up, Ellis_,' but he never moved or spoke.

On the dark horizon came the pillar of the New Bridgton spotlight. Their own little beacon. Ellis pressed his foot harder to the accelerator, and closed the distance.

* * *

Rochelle stood in the dimly-lit lobby of the school, staring outside through the glass doors. She shivered and bunched her heavy coat closer around herself. At night, the heat was shut off to conserve fuel. She sighed, continuing to watch the road outside the gate for any sign of headlights.

Where the hell _was_ he? Ellis didn't have a habit of being out past dark, nor was he often late on getting back to them. Worry churned under her sternum. What if he'd run into one of the really powerful zombies?

Why had she let him go _alone_?

Rochelle let out a deep breath and pushed her hands through her hair, down to her neck, gripping tightly. She felt rough scar tissue under her right hand and a familiar, reflexive chill swept through her.

A deep voice spoke from the stairs behind her.

"See anything yet?"

It was Coach. She turned her head to look at him as he went to her side. "Not yet."

The big man crossed his arms. They stood there together for a long while, not speaking, both looking out at the whirling snow and dark world outside.

Then, there came a light, down the road. Two lights. Headlights.

"Oh thank God," she said, rubbing her forehead and sighing in relief.

Coach stood silently next to her.

They watched as the big SUV pulled up to the gate. Ellis came out of the car and ran to the fence, shoving the chainlink open. It tried to stick on the build up of snow. He was moving fast; he sprinted back to the car and pulled into the parking lot, sliding to a stop just at the foot of the stairs.

Rochelle squared her shoulders and stepped outside.

Ellis came out of the driver's side and went around to the passenger door.

"Where the hell have you been?" Rochelle yelled, stopping at the first concrete step, hugging herself against the cold.

He didn't look at her. "Get Melanie up," was his reply, faint to hear past the wind and SUV's engine.

She furrowed her brows in confusion. He was leaning in the passenger side, gathering something up into his arms.

"What's wrong? Ellis, what is that?"

He turned around and she saw he was holding a body, swathed in blankets, its head pressed up against his shoulder. "Just get her _up_!" he snapped uncharacteristically, beginning up the stairs.

As he came closer, Rochelle squinted and leaned toward him, trying to see who the hell he was carrying. The person— a man— was half-covered in blanket, but she could see stubble, and short brown hair, and scars—

"Oh— oh, God. Oh, God." Ice settled in her veins. She suddenly felt a lot colder than the Maine winter. "Is that—"

"Rochelle, I need you to get Melanie up _right now_."

She stumbled backwards as Ellis passed to the lobby doors. Her mind turned in rapid circles, unable to comprehend what she'd seen. _He_ was _alive_. Not dead, he hadn't died on the ship, hadn't drowned in the ocean, he'd gotten off of it somehow and really _had _been trailing after them—

Inside the lobby, Ellis transferred the pile of blankets and body over to Coach's arms. The bigger man was silent, his skin almost gray and his eyes wide and bewildered.

"I'm going to get Melanie," Ellis said breathlessly. "Get him to the infirmary, okay?" He turned on his heels and took off down the hall, steps thundering and wet boots squeaking on the hardwood floor.

"Oh, Lord," she heard Coach whisper, and afterward his mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He clutched the body— the sickeningly gaunt little thing— close to his chest and started toward the infirmary. "Shh," he whispered, "it's okay, we're gonna take care of you."

She came close to see him, to confirm with her own eyes that she wasn't dreaming, she wasn't hallucinating, that Ellis had really found _him_ out there. The body was so still and small in Coach's arms. Rochelle pushed back one of the blankets, her heart pumping ice water through her entire body. One of her hands dragged down her face, the other shrank back from the blanket as if it had scalded her.

"Oh, God. Oh God, Coach, _look _at him."

"I see it. I know. Doesn't weigh a goddamn thing."

"Nick," she whispered, and by saying the name aloud it was as if a shell of pressure had shattered all around them, and the warmth rushed to her eyes, burning, more painful than the acid that had maimed her arm. Rochelle swallowed— tried to swallow— but the sob came out and it echoed in the long, dark hallway, and when the noise rebounded it hit her ears as a stab of guilt and vindication. She said his name again and there was no reply, and the thought that she may never get one made her heart twist in her chest until she was sure it would tear in two.

An older woman stepped into the doorway, Ellis close behind. Her eyes were bruised and tired, her mousy brown hair pulled back into a messy bun. She took one look at Coach and what the man held in his arms, and then barked an order:

"Set him down on the table, there. Right now."

Nick was clinging to Coach's shirt. He gently tugged the man's grip off his clothes and lay him carefully on the table, as if he were made of glass. Nick mumbled something and shivered.

The woman— their medic, Melanie— came over, ushering Coach aside and pushing back some of the blankets. She bent down and peered close at her new patient, and spoke without turning.

"Okay, guys, I'm gonna need you to leave. Out. Give me some space."

Coach started up. "But we—"

"The best thing you can do for this guy right now is stay out of my way, all right? Rochelle, you stay. You can help. Ellis, Coach, I need you to wait outside."

They looked at each other and slowly drifted out the door.

Melanie turned to Rochelle, and sighed. "All right, let's see what we've got going on, here."

* * *

Ellis hadn't stopped pacing for hours. It was past midnight and he was still wide awake, stalking back and forth down the hallway. On the other side of the infirmary door, it was quiet. Every once in a while he would be able to hear one of the two women talking, or a ragged cough, but otherwise, nothing. Coach sat on the nearby bench, hands clasped tightly together and pressed to his lips, eyes shut.

Shame and guilt burnt hot through his body, like a terrible fever.

Over and over, his mind spoke:

_He made it. He made it off that ship and you left him._

_You left him to die._

He felt like he might throw up, unable to stop remembering the feeling of holding the frail, light body in his arms. If he hadn't seen the scars he might have thought it was someone else.

It was too quiet. He had to say something.

"...Where'd you find him?" His own voice sounded hollow and it cracked as he spoke.

Ellis stopped pacing, stared at the door for a second longer, then looked at him. "Out on the highway. In a truck I left. 'Bout thirty miles south." He rubbed his arms as if to ward off a chill, and continued, "He was dyin' out there, Coach. _Dyin'_."

"Don't go sayin' that. They're in there fixing him now."

"You didn't see it, Coach. He didn't have _anything_. He didn't have a gun, or food, or— or—"

The kid stopped talking, shaking his head and looking away as if to hide his own expression. He dragged his hands through his mop of hair, then rubbed his face.

Coach stared at the floor.

_You left him to _die.

He dragged in a shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes shut. Ellis continued to pace back and forth, sighing and rubbing the back of his neck. Time passed them in agonizing moments. It was, by far, the longest wait he'd ever experienced in his entire forty-five years of life. His ears hung on every noise that came from the other side of the infirmary door. There was never the sound of a voice that wasn't Rochelle's or Melanie's.

Ellis came around and sat next to him. He hid his face in his hands.

"I was too late, Coach," he whispered through his fingers. "I was too late." He forced out a sigh, swallowing. "He ain't gonna make it, is he?"

"He will." _He has to._

"Did you... did you see his arm? There's a number. There's a number on his arm, Coach."

Hearing those words made it feel like his heart was going to explode through his chest. He pinched his fingers into the corners of his eyes, trying to will away the painful stinging that was welling in them. All he could think about were the words that had been tossed around about those facilities. Damp and dark. Violent. How it changed men into monsters.

Ellis shoved his fingers through his hair and down the back of his neck. "I never thought he'd... I mean, Nick is so _careful..._ how did he _end up_ there?"

Coach shook his head. He didn't remove his fingers from his eyes. "Don't know, Ellis."

The silence swept back in between them. Coach removed his hand from his face, wiped his cheeks roughly, and stared at the infirmary door, waiting for Rochelle to come out and tell him whether Nick was dead or alive.

At this point, he wasn't sure what the best option would be.

* * *

It had been a very long time, an age of holding and warming and low assuring whispers. Rochelle sat on the infirmary bed with Nick in her arms while he trembled and shook. Melanie was a flurry of sporadic movement around the room, searching for more blankets, more water bottles, more heating packs.

Keeping yourself away from death was a lot easier than dragging someone back from its door, Rochelle thought.

It had been a battle. Probably the worst she'd ever taken part in. More terrifying than the amusement park and the swamps and the hurricane. Death had been solid and tangible then, always a few feet away with claws and teeth. Something she could shove back, something that could be killed.

But not everything was black-and-white. Not anymore.

Melanie had gone off into the other room for something. Rochelle was rubbing Nick's back in a movement that had become automatic when he jerked in her arms and let out a low, frightened whine. She shifted, tightening him to her chest. He made a noise of surprise as he realized he was being held, strengthlessly bucking against her as he attempted to get away.

"Oh, Nick, no. Shh, shh, shh. It's okay, it's okay, Nick—"

He made a soft keening noise and slumped back into her arms. His strength was just gone; his eyes blinked rapidly as if he were trying to clear them of a haze.

She started speaking, low and gentle. "Nick, it's Rochelle. You're safe."

For a long time, he lay very still in her arms, taking slow breaths. She thought he might have slipped away again, but then, with a hoarse whisper that she could barely hear, he spoke to her. For the first time in over five months, she heard his voice.

"...Rochelle?"

And she answered. "It's me. It's me. I've got you now."

Nick reached up tentatively, as if he believed the person holding him was nothing more than an illusion. He was shaking from something much stronger than the cold, and Rochelle took his hand in her own, tightening her grip down over his icy, trembling fingers.

"It can't be you," Nick spoke, voice breaking. "It _can't _be you."

"It's me," she whispered, blinking tears out of her eyes. There wasn't much left of the man she'd known. Regret and shame burned hot in her entire body.

They shouldn't have left.

They should have _waited_.

Nick was shivering violently. "It _can't be you_," he repeated, reaching out to her. His hands found her arms, her shoulders, fingers trembling over the worn fabric of her clothes, like a blind man trying to conjure an image in his head. He learned that yes, this was indeed reality. His mouth opened, but he didn't speak for a long few seconds. "I... am I..." His fingers ran along the sleeve of her sweater and grasped weakly. "Am I _dead_?"

Rochelle's heart hurt. "No. No, you're not dead."

He swallowed. "Rochelle... I... I can't..." he whispered, voice plaintive, like a lost child, "I can't believe... can't... is it you? ...Is it really you?" His gaze finally found her, and then searched and searched, as if he were taking in the sight of something he'd never seen before.

There was dampness on his face and she rubbed it away with her thumbs, holding his head in her hands. His too-short hair was rough under her fingers. "It's me. You're safe now. You're going to be okay." She could see him trying to formulate words but failing. The tears in her eyes had never been so painful and welcome.

"It was..." he started, but his voice cracked and faltered and he had to swallow and start again. "It was so cold. The-the cages and the..." His words quickened, and began to run together. He focused suddenly, but not on her eyes or face, somewhere below her chin. "Don't wanna go back. Don't wanna go back there. Please, Rochelle, _please_..."

"It's okay," she whispered. "It's okay." She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him as tightly to her as she could. He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, trembling, eyes squeezed tightly shut. His hand had gripped fast to her sweater and did not let go. "I'm here. I'm here."

"Rochelle, Rochelle," he repeated. His voice had faded, just like the rest of him. "_Rochelle._"

"I'm here. You're going to be fine, Nick. I'm here for you."

Spasms ran through his body, soft at first but gaining strength as the moments passed them by.

"Shh, shh, shh," Rochelle murmured, rubbing his back, rocking him gently. "It's okay, honey. It's all right. I've got you. I've got you."

He said her name, again and again, as if it were the only thing he could comprehend. And eventually his voice slurred and ebbed and fell away and he was asleep again. He did not let go of her; she did not let go of him. She brushed her fingers against the top of his head and stared at him.

What hit her the hardest was not how thin he had become, or how hoarse his voice had gotten, but rather how much the scars on his face had faded. She remembered when they were deep and fresh. When there were dark stitches holding him together. Now they were simply pale white lines, old and healed, settled in the past. Irrelevant to what he'd pushed through to get to her.

Sobs rolled in her gut and she couldn't stave them off. All of this was _her_ fault, was _Coach's_ fault— if they'd waited, if they'd just stuck around a while longer, she wouldn't be holding him like this, a frail nearly-dead body that would have been just fine if _they had only fucking waited_—

Rochelle hunched over him, pressing her forehead against his, and sobbed.

"I'm so sorry, Nick. I'm so sorry."

She felt that every apology spoken since the beginning of time would never be enough.

* * *

Four hours passed before he came back around again. A pale, icy beam of morning light was pouring in through the window and cutting across the floor. Ellis had come in, taken root in the chair next to the bed, and hadn't moved since. Coach had stood at the foot of the bed for an hour, staring, before turning away silently and stepping out into the hall. He hadn't returned.

Rochelle stayed in the bed and gazed absently at the wall, watching as the edge of light crept further and further upward. Nick was still tangled awkwardly in her arms, his breath tickling the inside of her elbow. Ellis had his chin in his hands, eyes shut, dozing.

The clock ticked on the wall. The light brushed against it.

Nick let out a sudden, painful cough, jolting everyone awake— including himself. He opened his eyes and focused on the wall for a while before his gaze traveled slowly down to the floor, then followed the light back to the wall again. There was a long, sluggish blink.

Ellis stared, mouth parted. "Hey, brother," he whispered, reaching out to touch him.

Rochelle watched as Nick blinked again, shifted about with some effort, and centered his good eye on the young man.

After a long few seconds, he smiled.

"Hi, Ellis." His voice was a hoarse whisper, as if he'd worn it out by screaming.

The boy let out a shuddering laugh, shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes. He leaned forward and gripped the man's shoulder, then spoke, through a smile and a sob and all the things that had happened to the both of them, things that could not be changed, only accepted.

"Welcome home, Nick."

* * *

(_A/N: No April Fool's here. Turn the page for the epilogue!_)


	43. Epilogue

_**Please don't spoil the ending if you review.**_

* * *

It had been four days since he'd been found— according to Rochelle, at least. He couldn't remember most of it, nor could he remember the days before it. Now he was slowly coming back to himself, a little bit at a time, from that dark and hollow edge that he'd been pulled away from. Mostly, he slept. Rochelle and Ellis would wake him so he could eat— well, drink, since all he was allowed to have was chicken broth and protein powder shakes. They'd tried a half of a dinner roll after a few days, but he'd just thrown it back up.

He'd stumbled dazedly out of the thick black fog that had overtaken his whole world to find himself chained, once again, to a bed— not with an IV line, they'd taken that out after three days— but by his own lack of strength. He listened to Rochelle and the medic talk about 'anemia', a word he hadn't heard since Shaftsbury. 'Anemia' and 'malnutrition' and 'hypothermia'. Words that would have meant nothing to him if they weren't being applied to his failing body.

Nick was rarely alone. If it wasn't Rochelle it was Ellis, one or the other sitting in the chair next to him, talking to him or helping him eat or helping him to the bathroom. He didn't have much of a choice, but he never told them to leave, because he also couldn't admit that he needed them to stay.

They were blessedly lax about pressing him with questions about what had happened to him. He knew whenever they saw the tattoo they would turn a shade whiter and look away, as if ignoring it would erase it from existence. Nick didn't talk about it. He didn't much want to. Someday, he thought. Someday when the memory didn't make him shiver and collapse in on himself. He could see on their faces that they already knew what the facilities were like. They didn't have to hear about Shaftsbury and how it had completely splintered him apart from the inside out.

Sometimes one of them would come in with food or just to keep him company and he'd be curled up as tight as he could get on the end of the bed in the corner of the room, hands over the back of his neck, silent and motionless. They would come over and he'd wake up, but not from a dream, because he was never sleeping when it happened. Eventually, they stopped asking him what was wrong, and why he did it, mostly because Nick couldn't come up with an answer himself, let alone answer them.

He didn't talk much, and he could tell it unnerved them. Ellis was an almost-constant one-sided conversationalist, but Nick felt the kid talked enough for the both of them, and he didn't mind listening. Not anymore, not after the months of silence he'd just forced himself through. Nick knew everything about their journey from North Carolina to Maine within two days. He tried to force the bitter feelings back, that burning feeling of betrayal at how they'd gone on without him, but the more he tried to ignore it, the worse it got. If they'd waited, he might not have been brought to Shaftsbury. He might not be in the state he was in now, silent and hollow and _worthless_. He might still be _Nick_ and not _315_, not the trembling mess of fear and worry that Ellis and Rochelle had to constantly care for.

Coach didn't come around much. The big guy almost seemed frightened to talk to him, to learn what he'd become. Nick couldn't really blame him. He didn't much want to know himself, either. So he would curl up on the bed in a nest of blankets and listen to Ellis ramble on and on about nothing at all, or attempt to make conversation with Rochelle that usually ended with a long, awkward silence.

* * *

Eight days. He was able to get up and move around on his own, finally, although he was still restricted to the infirmary and couldn't do much but walk for a few minutes before having to rest again. It reminded him of how he'd felt at the ward, and he hated it, but he was glad to be able to do something by himself, independently, without Rochelle or Ellis carefully guiding him.

He saw the medic more and more each day. Nick had a strange brewing sense of paranoia that the others were scared to see him, uncomfortable with his silence and unsure how to interact. He wished he could be how they remembered. He couldn't blame them for not knowing how to handle it. It wasn't like _he_ knew how to.

It took him a while to start talking back to her. Something about the creases around her eyes reminded him of a doctor with a warm, caring smile and a strong-headed mother with a firm yet gentle voice. But the medic— Melanie, her name was Melanie— talked to him like she'd never met him, because she hadn't, while Rochelle and the others still looked at him as if he were the same man they'd met six months ago. He wasn't. And he hated it.

But Melanie didn't expect anything from him like the others did. He knew they all thought he was going to come right back again, that a few weeks of rest and food would somehow reverse the clock and bring _Nick_ back. He wasn't sure that was an option.

Not after the ninth day, when he woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, terrified and confused, expecting a concrete floor and flickering fluorescent bulbs but instead finding a bed and blankets and the soft light of a bedside lamp. He was alone but not for long, because Melanie had heard him and come in to see what was the matter. She flicked on the overhead lights and he flinched, falling silent, turning his face into the wall, expecting violence to come down on him for all the noise he was making.

But Melanie seemed to know what to do. She spoke softly and approached slowly, talking in soothing tones. She didn't ask him what was wrong, nor did she tell him to calm down or yell at him or let off any hint of impatience in her voice. Melanie sat slowly on the edge of the bed and didn't touch him, her voice a comforting, constant low hum.

"You're in Bridgton," she told him, over and over, "you're with your friends. You're safe. Nothing's going to hurt you in here." She repeated it until he finally turned away from the wall, shivering, bewildered, pawing at his face and digging his fingers in his hair. "Do you know where you are?"

Nick had to think for a long time. One half of him repeated, _Shaftsbury, Shaftsbury_, but the other half knew the truth and he wished that half could be the one in control. "...I'm in Maine," he answered eventually, hearing the dull, lifeless tone in his own voice. He sounded like someone that was brain-dead.

But he could hear the smile in her voice when she told him he was right, and it put a strange feeling in his gut that he couldn't identify. He curled up tightly against the wall again, and started to put his hands over the back of his head, but she grabbed his arms and put them back at his sides and pulled him against her chest and he didn't resist, but the tears wouldn't stop coming out of his eyes and he couldn't stave off the gasping sobs coming from his chest.

"What's _wrong_ with me?" he asked, feeling anger and terror and confusion, all in one white-hot flaring _hurt_ in his chest.

"It's just bad memories," she answered, softly, rubbing his back. "We'll get you through them."

Nick tried to swallow the noises coming from him but they came anyway. His good eye frantically searched the wall next to him and he took a deep breath before talking; he didn't want to think about it but he couldn't stop and he had to tell _someone_, "...They don't want me," his words were just above a whisper, terrified that saying them aloud would make them true. "I'm too fucked... I'm too fucked up."

"Of _course_ they want you." She didn't snap, or roughly correct him. Her voice had a startling lack of anger or surprise. "It's a long road ahead for you. You're not going to be fixed in a week. But they'll get you through it. You're going to be all right."

For a few minutes, he had the feeling that she was lying, just saying anything she could to get him calmed down. It gave him a sick feeling because it reminded him of Sijan and her voice and the noises she'd made when he'd—

Melanie held him tighter and the sensation broke his concentration. "Shh. You're going to be all right. You aren't alone."

Nick shuddered, hearing her voice echo in his head. _You aren't alone._ It had been so long. He didn't know what that would feel like or if he'd even be able to recognize it. _You aren't alone._ Wasn't he?

No, he wasn't, a tiny part of him said, or he thought it said, but it sounded like Melanie's voice in his head and not his own.

He stayed in her arms for a long time. She didn't leave until he'd fallen back asleep.

* * *

When he woke up again it was morning, and his head hurt, and Ellis was sitting watching him. The kid's eyes were bruised and bloodshot. Nick could only look for a few seconds before reverting his gaze back to the floor. Eye contact was impossible for him anymore.

"Mornin'," Ellis said softly. His voice was rough. He'd definitely been crying.

Nick stared at the checkerboard pattern of the linoleum beneath him. He wasn't stupid. "...She told you, huh?"

Ellis let out a hissing noise, and a short sob, and nodded. "Why didn't you _tell us_?" There was only a hint of anger in his voice. It was enough to put Nick on edge.

There were too many reasons why. They were already scared of him. He wasn't who they thought anymore. He didn't want to be pushed away and rejected. He was terrified to tell them what had happened because he was terrified of having to think about it. Too many reasons for him to be able to come up with a single answer. So he shook his head, and kept his eyes on the floor, hunching into the blankets. "...I don't know."

"Listen, Nick... we're here for you, okay? No matter what. Okay? Don't lock us out. We _want to help you._"

There was a voice in his brain. A distant, whispering memory. _I want to help you. Let me help you._

Nick tucked his face into the blankets to cover the tears coming back up, but Ellis wouldn't let him hide. He dropped down from the chair to the floor and dragged Nick into his arms but it seemed more for his comfort than Nick's because he was the one crying the hardest.

"Waited six months for you to come back. D'you really think we'd give up on you _now_, Nick?"

No, he supposed not, but he wasn't too sure he could talk without making a mess of his words. He kept quiet. Ellis held him tighter. The damn kid was fucking massive compared to him, and he felt very, very small.

"We're not gonna turn away from you, Nick. I don't care if you grow three heads and your hair turns to snakes. You're... you're my brother, all right? You don't gotta hide from me. From any of us. Did you really think that we wouldn't want you anymore?"

He nodded, because there wasn't anything else he could do, he couldn't talk, he'd just make a fool of himself.

Ellis let out a pained noise and sighed. "No. Don't you think like that. I'm not goin' anywhere. I don't care how busted-up you are. We're all busted. We're all in this together, though, you understand that?"

Nick nodded again.

"Nobody's expectin' you to bounce right back. We'd be a bunch'a hypocrites if we did. And even if you don't. I'm not gonna go anywhere and Ro's not gonna go anywhere and Coach isn't gonna go anywhere, either. Don't shut us out, okay?"

Another nod. It was starting to feel mechanical. He still couldn't talk.

There was a shadow in the doorway and he looked over, startled, but it was just Rochelle. She looked even worse than Ellis. Like her best friend had just died.

Well. Nick probably wasn't her best friend, but a part of him _was_ dead, and it wasn't coming back.

She came over at a near-sprint and climbed onto the bed and tried to tug him into her arms but Ellis was still there so they all just ended up piled up against one another. Nick was starting to feel grateful that Melanie had said something to them. At first he'd been angry. Now he was glad that they had an idea— that _he_ had an idea— of what the hell was wrong with him.

There was another shadow in the doorway. Coach. The big brute wasn't crying, but he looked more than a little strained. Nick couldn't recognize any other emotions on the older man's stony face. Something like regret, or guilt. Over what, he had no idea.

He huddled in their arms for a long, long time, silent, slowly reining in his emotions. Nick didn't talk for about a half an hour.

After that, he told them.

Everything.

He'd never cried so hard in his life.

* * *

Fifteen days. It was that afternoon when Melanie finally let him leave the infirmary. Ellis was there, of course, voice skipping in excitement as he led Nick around the safe zone, showing him their room— _his _room too, now— and the auto shop and everything else that he could think to talk about. Nick followed him silently, just listening, peering down the hallways and glancing over the faded white walls. It was a far cry from Eight Springs, with its hotel and bar and wide open courtyard. Bridgton wasn't much but an old elementary school, classrooms converted to bedrooms and gymnasium turned into an auto shop. Nick saw a few other people that he didn't recognize or feel the need to talk to. None of them talked to him, anyway.

They were afraid of him. The tattoo, he knew, and probably his nightmares and the way he looked, eyes empty and expression almost always blank. He kept his arm covered with the sleeves of the too-loose and heavy sweater that had once been Ellis', and wished they didn't know about it. Nick was positive they were already writing him off as insane. He wasn't quite that bad. At least he hoped so.

He was coming back. A little bit at a time. It was going to take a while. And he was never going to be all there, ever again, but he'd accepted that, like he'd accepted a lot of things. The loss of his eye. How clothes never fit him and he was always cold. His hair, barely an inch long now. Graying. He could deal with it. He'd dealt with worse.

Nick was staring out of the upper floor window at the parking lot below. The snow was beginning to melt, revealing the cracked blacktop underneath. He didn't know what day it was. It had been a long time since he'd been worried about it. He cleared his throat and asked Ellis.

The kid was counting off on his fingers for a few moments before saying with a guessing sort of tone, "May. Early May. I think?"

Nick hummed and looked back out the window. His eye caught movement and he noticed a shaggy form wandering around by the fence. Black and white. Something tightened in his chest but he ignored it.

"You have dogs?" he asked softly. He never spoke very loudly. Not anymore.

"Oh, yeah, man. Three of 'em. Peter found 'em guarding an old junkyard. Brought 'em over here." Ellis stood next to him, smiling slightly at the animal below. "That one's Annabelle. You wanna meet 'em, Nick?"

He blinked and thought for a long few moments. Then he shook his head.

Ellis shrugged. "All right."

Nick couldn't remember if he'd told them about Rob. His memory of the days earlier when he'd broken in half and just blubbered everything out like a frightened child was muddled and faint. All he could really remember was telling them about the facility.

He took a breath and carefully guided his thoughts away from the memories. Melanie had taught him how. Flashbacks, she called them, in a clinical tone, like a doctor would describe a minor cough. Like they didn't completely fuck him up and devolve him to a terrified, shivering mess for hours on end. He wondered if she'd been a psychologist.

Ellis was talking again; Nick blinked and focused, shaking his head a little.

"...And then we got Annabelle last. I think she's some kinda herding dog. Never seen one all black-and-white like that. You should'a seen 'em, Nick. They were all skin n'bones." Ellis tilted his head. "Worse n'you, yeah." His tone was lighthearted, trying to make light of the situation.

Nick shoved his hands in his pockets, silent. He didn't react to much anymore.

But Ellis accepted that and shrugged. "Anyway, the big one, Rusty— I think he's a German Shepherd but I dunno for sure. I only had a few dogs growin' up, they were all Labs." He started walking down the hall again. Nick followed him closely. "I remember one time, Keith—"

"Ellis."

"He got in a wrestln' match with one of 'em—"

"_Ellis._"

The kid trailed off, looking back at him, worry on his face. "You okay?"

Nick frowned. "Ellis... shut the fuck up."

A huge grin split across the kid's face.

"Now _that's_ the Nick I remember."

He felt a strange emotion turning over in his chest and just frowned again. "No. You just talk too fuckin' much."

Ellis laughed aloud, patted his shoulder gently, and moved on down the hall.

"You're gonna love the library, Nick..."

* * *

Twenty-one days.

Nick was finally given the green light to eat something other than the chalky syrupy shit he'd been forcing down for three weeks. He sat at the cafeteria with everyone else, staring down at the tuna salad sandwich that Coach had gotten for him. Half of one, of course. Nick peeled the crust off first and worked on that, taking small bites. It tasted good, and he realized that it was the first thing he'd _enjoyed_ since Eight Springs. He ate slowly, savoring it, and also not wanting to puke it back up from going too fast.

It was strangely silent and he looked up from his food to see the others staring at him.

"...What?"

Ellis was beaming. "You're smilin'."

Nick hadn't been aware of it. He glanced uneasily at Rochelle, who had a similar expression. "Uh... okay," he said, not sure how he was supposed to reply.

"First time you've smiled in weeks," she said. It looked like a decade of age and strain had come off of her face. "It looks good on you."

His reply was reflexive and came from a part of him he'd thought was long dead.

"Ro'... _everything_ looks good on me."

Coach let out a bark of laughter next to him and slapped him on the back so hard he thought his spine was going to break. There was a strange feeling in his gut and it took him a few moments to realize what it was. Then he grinned again.

A piece of him slipped back into place. He remembered what it felt like to be happy.

* * *

A month, now. Nick spent most of his time following either Ellis or Rochelle around. Anything to stop from being alone. Ellis spent most of his time in the auto shop working on cars. Rochelle spent her days with Melanie, learning about medical procedures and medications and a million other things Nick couldn't keep straight. Neither of them seemed to mind that he was constantly in their shadow. He didn't say anything about it, but he was sure they knew. Nick felt like some kind of homesick dog and it reminded him of Rob.

He wasn't sure why, but Coach tended to avoid him. After a month it started to worry him a little.

Nick eventually wandered to the cafeteria— Coach did most of the cooking for the little safe-zone— and tried to find him to ask what was wrong.

It was dinnertime and he could hear the others that lived here talking behind the doors. Nick entered cautiously, trying not to imagine their eyes on him. He kept his gaze turned down to the floor and made his way to the kitchen. Coach was there, stirring something in a massive pot.

He didn't look at Nick, but he did talk in what sounded like a forced tone. "Hey there. Somethin' I can help you with?" It was a lot like how Coach spoke to the other survivors here, the ones that Nick never interacted with. Clipped and almost unrealistically polite.

Nick took a deep breath. No need to dance around the topic. "Why are you avoiding me?"

Coach fell still and quiet, as if he'd been slapped. Nick studied him, the way he was standing, his silence and his half-bowed head. His mind turned over the information and he realized that he was seeing guilt. Over what, he wasn't too sure.

Until Coach cleared his throat and spoke. "Listen... I'm— I'm sorry. We should have waited for you."

Now it was Nick's turn to recoil. He hadn't thought of North Carolina, of the ship, of the day that had started everything, in weeks. The anger and feeling of betrayal had faded with time, but now it flared right back to life again. He felt his eyebrows tightening down. "Why _didn't_ you?" It was a question he'd asked himself hundreds of times, back there, on the road.

Coach seemed to struggle with the answer. Like there were multiple reasons and he was carefully choosing which one would upset him the least. "...We all thought... we all saw the ship, Nick. We watched it _sink_."

The memory of the flooding corridors and roaring water rose up in his mind but his own strengthening anger quashed it down. "I know. I know, Coach, because I was _on it when it sank._" His voice was raised. It was the loudest he'd spoken in months. "How long did you even _wait_ to see if I came back?"

Coach would not meet his eyes. He focused on the pot of food in front of him instead. "Two days."

Nick shook his head. "That's not a whole lot of time, Coach."

"...No, it's not."

"You didn't think I'd come back at all."

"No. I didn't."

"Well what a goddamn surprise, huh?" Nick could feel the anger and spark in his own voice. How long since he'd spoken like he used to? Like he was _alive?_ "And here I am. A hundred-twenty pounds and fucked up beyond belief because you couldn't _wait more than two days._"

Coach wouldn't look at him. He'd fallen quiet.

"No wonder you won't fucking talk to me. This," he gestured to himself, the gaunt, sickly, _batshit-crazy_ pile of worthlessness that couldn't even stand to be _alone_ for any length of time, "...it's all _your fault._"

Finally the bigger man spoke. "Listen. Nick. I'm sor—"

"Don't. Don't say it. I don't want to fucking hear it." His voice fell and became low and hoarse. "I don't give a shit what your reasons were for leaving. You did it. That's enough. It was more than enough."

Coach turned toward him now, trying to look at him, trying to explain, trying to fix it. "Nick—"

He stepped back, shied away from any sort of contact.

"..._Fuck you_, Coach."

Nick turned and stalked out. The other survivors didn't look at him, and he was glad for it.

* * *

He went straight to Rochelle, who was in the infirmary, alone, reading a medical text. She saw the anger on his face before he even said anything, and frowned. "What's the matter, Nick?"

"Coach," he seethed, "fucking _left me there_ after two days. How could you let that happen?!"

She shook her head, dropping her eyes to the floor. "There were zombies _everywhere_, Nick. We couldn't just _hang around—_"

"Don't you fucking say that. You could have waited another goddamn day."

Rochelle flinched at his tone. She seemed to realize that this had been a long time coming.

"Do you have _any fucking idea_ what I went through to get here? It wasn't just Shaftsbury—" the word made terror creep up in his mind but he used his own anger to force it away, "—it was _hell_, Ro'. And I fucking did it _alone_."

She shook her head, and reached out to take his hand, but he flinched back.

"Just come with me," she begged. "I need to show you something."

Rochelle led him out of the infirmary, down the stairs to the lobby and the doors outside. It was the first time he'd been outside since he'd arrived here. She took his hand and guided him around the back side of the building. The sight that greeted him made his stomach turn. Gravestones. He was looking at a graveyard.

And right off to one side, there was a cinderblock with his name on it.

"What the fuck is this?" he asked, but he already knew.

"About a week before Ellis found you. We had your funeral."

Nick felt like he was going to puke. He stared down at it, tracing the four letters over and over with his eye. "_Why?_" he asked. "You seriously _thought—_"

"We _thought_," she spoke slowly, carefully choosing her words, "we _watched the ship sink_, Nick. And we _did wait._ You don't think we tried to find you? There wasn't anything in the water but dead zombies and pieces of that ship." Rochelle let out a long breath. "Please understand, Nick. What would _you_ have done?"

He glared at her, giving her a rare moment of unbroken eye contact. "I would have fucking _waited._" It was true. He'd thought about it hundreds of times, and his choice would have always been the same.

"We _did wait._ There were so many zombies, Nick, we couldn't— I'm trying to _tell you_—"

"Then you fucking tell me. You tell me, Rochelle, how long has it been, huh? How long since the cruise ship? Two months? Three?"

"_Six_..."

"Six months. That's a half of a year, Rochelle."

"Yes, it is..."

"And how much of that did you spend thinking I was dead?"

"Nick, I don't like this..."

"No, you need to say it. You need to say it. How _fucking long_?!"

"I don't—"

"Listen to me, Rochelle. That six months? It didn't feel like six months at all. It felt like _years_. You have no _idea_ what that's like."

"I'm sorry, Nick..."

"No. Don't tell me you're sorry. Don't you fucking feel _sorry_ for me!"

"I..."

"_You_. Yes, _you_. You could have waited a couple more days— maybe just one, I might have made it in one— for me to find you. Three fucking days! And here I fucking am, six months later, staring at my own goddamn grave because _someone_ couldn't _wait_ twenty-four more hours for me to catch up!"

Rochelle was crying, now, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands.

Nick shook his head. "Jesus Christ, Rochelle. Don't you fucking get it? _Look at me._ I'm not even half the person I used to be. You could have prevented that." The fact that he could have avoided Shaftsbury, avoided D.C., avoided the frozen lake and everything else by a simple decision from them made him want to scream until he went mute. "No wonder you're all afraid to talk to me. You fucking caused it."

He glanced over the grave one more time before turning and leaving.

* * *

Nick didn't know where he was going. He paced the hallways for a few minutes, then wandered off again. There was a flight of stairs at the end of the west wing. They led up to a door and he opened it and found himself on the roof of the school. Beyond the mountains, the sun was setting. As it fell from the sky it threw color into the air, orange-red and pink, brushing along the undersides of the fragmented clouds and reflecting off of the untouched snow beyond the fence line of the safe zone. The school beneath him was silent, and so was the rest of the world.

He brushed the snow off of the edge of the roof and sat. Nick gave a glance down to the parking lot below. He wondered if he jumped, if the fall would kill him. Probably not. And that would be just his luck.

Nick pushed his hands through his hair and let out a shuddering sigh. The anger in him had begun to subside, leaving him feeling cold and empty. This was the first time in ages that he'd purposely gone off to be alone. He sat for a long time, watching the color of the sunset slowly change from red to purple.

The door behind him opened and shut. He didn't look.

"Hey, Nick." It was Rochelle. She spoke in quiet, sheepish tones and he heard the snow crunch as she slowly approached him from behind.

He thought about jumping.

She stood next to him. "...Can I sit with you?"

Nick didn't look at her, but he brushed aside some of the snow next to him and motioned for her to sit. She did, but she didn't get too close.

They sat in silence for a long time.

Rochelle spoke first. "I missed you."

Nick removed his eye from the color of the sunset and glanced toward her. He let out a long and silent sigh. "I missed you, too." All of them, really. But he wasn't about to tell Ellis that.

"That was the happiest day of my life, you know. So far. When Ellis brought you back."

He heard her shifting and flinched at the feeling of her hand settling on his shoulder. Rochelle didn't seem to notice.

"Never thought I'd see you again, Nick. But here you are. Here_ we_ are."

She tugged him a little closer. He resisted for a few seconds, then sighed, defeated, and let himself be pulled tight against her shoulder.

"I know you're angry. I'm angry, too. At myself. There's just things we can't change, Nick."

He kept his silence.

"We can't change them, but we can learn to live with them." She shifted and pulled back the sleeve of her jacket. He saw something that he hadn't noticed, because she always kept it covered— a scar. Huge, covering almost the entire limb. "We ran into a Spitter about four months back. Almost lost my arm."

Nick frowned, reaching over with shivering fingers to brush against it. The scar tissue was smooth yet uneven. It looked like it had been an incredibly painful wound.

"And you know... all I could think was, 'Be like Nick. He wouldn't have let this stop him.'"

He gently turned her arm over and she shifted and brushed her hand down and threaded her fingers through his, pulling him tight against her again.

"You are..." she paused as if to think, "...the strongest person I've ever met."

At that, he finally reacted, albeit with a slight scoff. "...Yeah, right."

"No. It's true." She rubbed her other hand up and down his arm. "I'm proud of you, Nick. I'm glad we're friends."

Something turned over in his stomach and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"We're friends, aren't we?"

He was silent for a long minute. "...Yeah. Yeah, we're friends."

She let out a soft chuckle. "I know you feel betrayed. And there's nothing I can do to change that. But please just try to remember. I'm here for you, Nick. I'll always be here for you. I'll never turn away." Her hand brushed up past his shoulder and he leaned along with her touch, settling his head on her shoulder. She brushed her fingers through his short hair.

Her arms were warm and comfortable around him. They fit well together. As if, for once, he belonged there. Belonged somewhere, _anywhere_.

"I'll be here for as long as you'll ever need me. And even after that."

A little spasm ran through him and he tried to swallow it, but it was too strong.

Rochelle made a small, sad noise. "Oh, honey, don't cry."

"I'm not. Crying. I'm _not_."

He could hear the smile in her voice. She held him tightly and didn't let go.

"This is where you belong, Nick. You're _home_ now," she said.

And he was.

* * *

End

* * *

(_Huge-ass author's note: Yay, I finished it! This is the first big project I've ever actually completed, wow. Almost fell flat on my face a couple times but thanks to my friends I was able to pick up and keep working at it._

_Big thanks to my beta-readers, Kit and Vicks, without whom this story wouldn't have existed. And also you guys who helped fill-in as betas: Glue, Erik, Larry, Beetle, and Lizzy. You are way too awesome to me._

_So that's it! Hope you enjoyed the ride._

_I'll be working on something else for a while but many of you already know what it is. ;) Unfortunately you all haven't seen the last of me. I know, I'm such a pain in the ass._

_THANK YOU SO MUCH to all my readers. I never expected my stupid little fic would get this much attention. I'm absolutely flabbergasted. You guys are all just fucking amazing. I don't deserve it._

_If you need to reach me for whatever reason, my Tumblr and Steam links are in my ff.n profile. I'm not hard to get a hold of._

_Clear skies, everyone!_

_-Ash._))


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